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AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

cnbc.com

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Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#121

Post by barbecue_sauce »

mtw wrote: post #116
sonnyblarney wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There should be hundreds of thousands or millions of these hacked motherboards" No, the boards would be selectively hacked. And we know it happens because 'we' do it as well. Surely there is evidence floating around but it's also unlikely that companies would want to admit the breach. I kind of believe Apple and Amazon though, there's too much risk if they were to be caught lying. This is a weird one ...

> And we know it happens because 'we' do it as well. What's the logic in this? This is like saying Saudis must be Christians because we are Christians as well

The implication here is more "we know its possible because we do it".

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#122

Post by drb91 »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #61
jackconnor wrote: post #16

There should be hundreds of thousands or millions of these hacked motherboards, and nobody has found a single one despite hardware geeks worldwide searching like it was Willy Wonka's final golden ticket. This story was bogus, it most likely came from a ton of rumors that got conflated, hence why they had to go with anonymous sources as opposed to any physical evidence. I'd be surprised if Bloomberg has any credibilit…

"There should be hundreds of thousands or millions of these hacked motherboards" No, the boards would be selectively hacked. And we know it happens because 'we' do it as well. Surely there is evidence floating around but it's also unlikely that companies would want to admit the breach. I kind of believe Apple and Amazon though, there's too much risk if they were to be caught lying. This is a weird one ...

How would you verify this theory?

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#123

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

jackconnor wrote: post #40
appleiigs wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article you linked states, Bloomberg says: > Joe FitzPatrick was not one of these 17 individual primary sources that included company insiders and government officials,

Oh, he was one of the named sources. Good catch, though that doesn't change the point.

The entire story is an elaboration of a hypothetical example Fitzpatrick gave in consultation. That the final article is an exact match is seriously problematic.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#125

Post by drb91 »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #93
jorblumesea wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely there's at least a few thousand of the hacked boards? The article mentioned a data center and entire companies being targeted. All it would take is someone to dig up some junked boards, unless they were intentionally destroyed to hide evidence. Unlike 0 days or other issues, this seems like it would be easy to reproduce. Just need to find the boards.

Things are hacked often with a specific facility or installation in mind. It could be as little has a handful and that'd be enough to compromise a lot . I actually don't care what the truth [edit: truth of this specific BMRG story] is - the West needs a 'wake up call' on this one and any company installing hardware should be inspecting everything that comes in. Too much lax security out there, sadly, the US gov I don…

> I actually don't care what the truth is

Why are you in this thread at all then?

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#126

Post by drb91 »

moftz wrote: post #107
jorblumesea wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely there's at least a few thousand of the hacked boards? The article mentioned a data center and entire companies being targeted. All it would take is someone to dig up some junked boards, unless they were intentionally destroyed to hide evidence. Unlike 0 days or other issues, this seems like it would be easy to reproduce. Just need to find the boards.

You only want to slip in as few of these implants as possible to get in. You obviously want to hit as many networks as possible but only for targets that actually make sense. Hitting a DoD network has higher value than hitting the Mormon church's streaming servers. If these implants are real, they aren't cheap and the less that are in the wild, the less chance someone will find one on accident. If the implant actuall…

Any evidence of this theory?

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#127

Post by pvg »

enraged_camel wrote: post #111
pvg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be catastrophic for Bloomberg - if a news org is seen as more interested in protecting its reputation than protecting its sources, no sensitive source would speak to it again. They can easily eat the hit of one potentially bad story. They can't eat the hit of 'dicks around with sources'.

Well, they would obviously get consent from the sources first, rather than simply sharing their names with the other outlets.

A source contacts a journalist offering sensitive information with the expectation that their anonymity will be zealously protected. Then the journalist comes back to the source asking they risk compromising their anonymity further by talking to an entirely different news organization. This would qualify as 'dicking with sources' and no sane journalist would normally do this, for both professional ethical and business reasons.

What you're suggesting involves both violating the trust of the source and creating the impression the news organization needs its competitors to establish its credibility. I can't imagine this is anything short of a complete non-starter for Bloomberg, an actual serious news organization.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#128

Post by drb91 »

sterlind wrote: post #102
leoc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly not the case that the US government has been above disinformation campaigns aimed at its own citizens even in the recent https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mirage-men https://www.dailygrail.com/2013/06/a-fractured-hall-of-mirro... or very recent https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-prog... past. Though of course there would be much more political risk in lying to Bloomberg News than in…

What evidence do you have that AATIP was a disinformation campaign? The UFO story was extremely weird, but I've seen no evidence that the Pentagon fabricated the footage, or somehow coerced Fravor into lying on primetime TV. Moreover, what would the Pentagon gain by running a UFO psy-op?

> Moreover, what would the Pentagon gain by running a UFO psy-op?

Space Force

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#129

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

gbin wrote: post #3
nil_pointer wrote: post #2

[removed]

What bothers me is that we have no proof and everything is vague. The motherboard needs to account for the chip at the PCB traces level to work right? Did anybody saw a weird 6 traces converging at a point for no reason on all the motherboards on the market? What is the exact model? Which bus it is fed from? Give me the name of the bus instead of vague journalistic stuff! Send pictures, output captures, anything.

The device in the photographs is essentially a fancy multi-layer ceramic cap. It can't contain a silicon die without a manufactured cavity and a lid. There is no way to do that in such a small package.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#130

Post by drb91 »

fanzhang wrote: post #63

The lack of confirming evidence is a strong sign the Bloomberg reporters were played. It's interesting to wonder who might have done that though -- US businesses who might gain? Those from within the administration? Regardless of the truthfulness of the report, the damage is done and the hack story fits in well for the protectionist trajectory the US is taking.

Because bloomberg failed at basic jounalism, we will likely never know.
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