Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#101

Post by philwelch » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #74

user5994461 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to believe than Tim Cook or any executive would be aware of anything. In large companies with a hundred thousand employees and contractors, barely anyone is aware of anything. Ask a thousand people about project something and they will assert in good faith that they have never heard of it. It doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, just that you didn't find the handful of people who knows about it.

>There is no reason to believe than Tim Cook or any executive would be aware of anything. The minute this story hit publication you can bet internal security teams at Apple would have validated it and submitted findings to Tim Cook. At this point Tim Cook, along with his legal team, has all the facts as they pertain to Apple and Apple suppliers and every component inside Apple devices. You don't come out without a st…

Unless there are moles on both sides inside of Apple, and the PRC-malicious-chip-installation moles managed to destroy evidence and silence witnesses. That sounds vaguely fantastic, but "PRC installing malicious chips on server motherboards and Anonymous Sources discovering those chips and leaking news to Bloomberg" is already well into spy vs. spy territory.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#102

Post by mcphage » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

GrinningFool wrote: post #96

mrb wrote: post #52

In the past, Apple has lied about a severe security incident involving Super Micro hardware. In 2016 Super Micro Senior Vice President of Technology himself said Apple found "infected firmware." It was so bad that Apple "discontinued future business [with Super Micro] as a result of a compromised internal development environment". Strangely Apple at the time was denying the whole thing: https://appleinsider.com/artic…

I would expect that if it's fabricated, Bloomberg will have to face a slew of defamation suits from the named companies. If it's real, the absence of those suits may tell us something too...

> I would expect that if it's fabricated, Bloomberg will have to face a slew of defamation suits from the named companies.

I'm not sure defamation is the right word here—"X was attacked by a foreign government" isn't defamation.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#103

Post by jsoc815 » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

xGrill wrote: post #66

apeace wrote: post #56

Is the following a possible explanation? * Random Apple engineer finds the implant. * Goes directly to FBI without telling boss at Apple. * FBI gags the engineer, says "Do not even tell your boss about this, it's national security and we're handling it". * Bloomberg catches wind of this (maybe the same engineer leaks to them?), publishes their story. * Engineer is now freaked, goes back to FBI and says "Are you reall…

> Goes directly to FBI without telling boss at Apple. This is really hard to believe. An engineer who found this bug at Apple would most likely be praised for finding it. It is a huge discovery. What motivation would he have to not tell his manager?

> would most likely be praised for finding it. It is a huge discovery.

Seriously, history, recent and otherwise, is littered w/the ghosts and carcasses of employees who were anything but rewarded for identifying problems great and small.

Oftentimes the safest thing to do is to pretend that one saw/heard/knows nothing while hoping that someone else has the steel to sound the alarm.

And for this sort of situation, there's too much at stake and are too many known and unknown stakeholders involved to blindly believe that this would be an exception to what I wrote above.

On a separate but related note, for those playing the "conspiracy theory" game: - On October 4th, Bloomberg releases The Big Hack story; and - On the same day, VP Pence gives a speech at the Hudson Institute about...? China being a bad actor which indulges in all sorts of behavior (that the United States would never ever engage in or condone).[1]

Factor in the "trade war" and long-ongoing attempts to 'encourage' companies to rethink their supply chains/ relocate production...

[1] https://www.hudson.org/events/1610-vice-president-mike-pence...

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#104

Post by philwelch » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

jmull wrote: post #40

parliament32 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tim Cook is not properly informed - which is very unlikely at this point Humor me, why is this unlikely? Why is it not possible that (whatever three letter agency) grabbed a few engineers, told them to do X without talking to anyone else, at the risk of them and their families getting disappeared to a black site? Besides, in security controlled jobs it's perfectly normal to not be allowed to disclose what you're wor…

Well, who scrubbed the emails? Who scrubbed the data center record? And the financial records and shipping records? Who hid the motherboards? It’s going to take more than a couple engineers to cover this up completely. Also, if the consequence for talking about this is being disappeared, why weren’t the Bloomberg reporters disappeared some time during the year they were working on the story? And why exactly would a t…

They're not doing it to protect Apple, they're doing it to protect their sources and methods within Apple. Tim Cook isn't a huge friend of the FBI (http://time.com/4262480/tim-cook-apple-fbi-2/) so if the FBI has a counterintelligence op embedded within Apple, they're going to want to hide it from Cook.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#105

Post by ams6110 » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

abalone wrote: post #80

mrb wrote: post #52

In the past, Apple has lied about a severe security incident involving Super Micro hardware. In 2016 Super Micro Senior Vice President of Technology himself said Apple found "infected firmware." It was so bad that Apple "discontinued future business [with Super Micro] as a result of a compromised internal development environment". Strangely Apple at the time was denying the whole thing: https://appleinsider.com/artic…

In the past, these Bloomberg reporters have misreported on NSA exploiting Heartbleed. Here is the Washington Post giving them shit about it:[1] As for the 2016 incident, read Apple's denial more closely. They denied finding infected firmware on servers purchased from SuperMicro. What happened is someone in the design lab (not in production) downloaded infected firmware from SM's support site, where it was "still host…

> someone in the design lab (not in production) downloaded infected firmware from SM's support site

Other than the claim that the infected firmware is "still hosted there" (which beggars belief) that sounds more like an engineer was spearphished and fooled into downloading firmware from what he believed to be the SM support site.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#106

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

mcphage wrote: post #102

GrinningFool wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect that if it's fabricated, Bloomberg will have to face a slew of defamation suits from the named companies. If it's real, the absence of those suits may tell us something too...

> I would expect that if it's fabricated, Bloomberg will have to face a slew of defamation suits from the named companies. I'm not sure defamation is the right word here—"X was attacked by a foreign government" isn't defamation.

It could be. Particularly of the foreign government, but also of the supposed target especially if security of the kind that was claimed to be compromised is key to their business reputation.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#107

Post by snowwrestler » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

electrograv wrote: post #51

I think Bloomberg was probably irresponsible to publish the Chinese spy chip story, whether it was true or false! Here's why: * If the story is false , it's irresponsible because it causes severe monetary and reputational damage to companies that do not deserve it (e.g. Supermicro's stock is still down ~ 40% ). * If the story is true , it's a MAJOR breach of classified information from US intelligence operations; ope…

IMO the only intelligence info the press should really try to protect is foreign sources and methods. People could die--either sources directly, if they are exposed, or victims of future attacks that could have been prevented if the source/method had not been burned.

But intelligence info it absolutely makes sense for the press to cover, is evidence of foreign intelligence activities that were domestically discovered.

In this case, the "source" of the discovery would presumably some employee of Apple or Amazon, and their "method" of discovery would be inspecting their own systems. While I can understand why the govt might want to keep that classified, I think it's well within the realm of what citizens would like to know, without obvious and direct risk to lives.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#108

Post by mcphage » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #19

stingraycharles wrote: post #8

It’s fascinating to see this story unfold. On one end you have Bloomberg doubling down on their claims, and here you have Apple making a move that shows their confidence in their claims. For a while I was buying the subpoena theory, but this action clearly doesn’t fall under that, and they would be setting themselves up for serious liability / damage claims if it were true. Either there is some gross miscommunication…

>Tim Cook is not properly informed - which is very unlikely at this point Humor me, why is this unlikely? Why is it not possible that (whatever three letter agency) grabbed a few engineers, told them to do X without talking to anyone else, at the risk of them and their families getting disappeared to a black site? Besides, in security controlled jobs it's perfectly normal to not be allowed to disclose what you're wor…

> This idea that Tim Cook / Apple PR must know everything that's going on at Apple is kinda ridiculous.

He doesn't have to know everything, but he sure as hell would know "a foreign government is implanting spy chips into the hardware that is being sold to us".

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#109

Post by philwelch » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

electrograv wrote: post #51

I think Bloomberg was probably irresponsible to publish the Chinese spy chip story, whether it was true or false! Here's why: * If the story is false , it's irresponsible because it causes severe monetary and reputational damage to companies that do not deserve it (e.g. Supermicro's stock is still down ~ 40% ). * If the story is true , it's a MAJOR breach of classified information from US intelligence operations; ope…

> If the story is true, it's a MAJOR breach of classified information from US intelligence operations; operations which I assume (without evidence to the contrary) are operating in good faith -- in the interest of the US and its citizens. Breaching classified information of such ongoing investigations to trace supply chains of spy chips could very well compromise those investigations (which would be irresponsible to risk).

Unless those counterintelligence operations were, by intention and policy, the original source of the story in the first place. I could easily imagine an FBI agent essentially telling Bloomberg, "Hey, we discovered this security vulnerability, but the only sustainable solution is to convince the tech industry to move hardware manufacturing out of PRC control--we'll feed you the story but don't say it came from us."

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story

#110

Post by Drdrdrq » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 7:11 PM UTC

MertsA wrote: post #53

Drdrdrq wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, so you know what the truth is in this case? Good for you! /s

Bloomberg listed a lot of entities in that article and every single one that wasn't anonymous has all but called Bloomberg outright frauds over it. They have all sorts of anonymous sources telling them anything and everything about this supposed plot yet none of them provided any shred of evidence to back up their claims. Where's the smoking gun here? Why don't we have die shots of this thing? Why hasn't anyone on th…

What do you expect Bloomberg to do? Give up their sources? I'm sure they will have no trouble getting new stories if they did that, right? Given the size of the story and their commitment to it I would bet they were duped. There are many who would like to see them lose credibility, who would like to further escalate trade war with China, or who simply shorted some stocks... Or all of the above. But that's a bet, not an opinion. I do however have a problem with someone taking sides so eagerly, without admitting that they don't have a clue. Or if they do, please enlighten us. I'm sure their sources are better than Bloombergs.