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Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

reuters.com

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Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#241

Post by acqq »

asituop wrote: post #189
freeflight wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing, just like nothing will happen to the outlets who are currently pushing this "Huwai is spying on everybody" narrative with not an ounce of evidence for it except for unfounded and unsourced claims by FiveEyes intelligence services [0]. Afaik that whole Bloomberg/Super Micro thing was similarly set up, referring to "anonymous intelligence/industry services", not even naming the company that supposedly did the…

Not that Huawei is the only and surely some other brands are even worse, but still Huawei phones are full of spyware, just open NetGuard or another example here : https://mobile.twitter.com/fs0c131y/status/10515681807480135... But once again surely other brands, Western companies included, are also spying, but it doesn't change the fact that Huawei does it too.

Isn‘t the given example of a phone for the chinese market?

From the thread there:

“this will only happen with phones that are meant to stay in china, and also using software made for the chinese market. if your phone is shipped outside of china or has google play services, they're fine”

“It's only Chinese roms that don't have Google play store. This has been known for awhile and honestly this while ep 2 shit is nothing new.”

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#242

Post by asdff »

cm2187 wrote: post #17
pmorici wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most likely explanation is that Bloomberg got played by the sources who perhaps wanted to trade on the price action the story would obviously cause. We don't really know anything about Bloomberg's sources we do know the nature of all the parties denying any of this is true.

I find that highly unlikely. Since Supermicro was kicked out of the NASDAQ, I would expect their trading to be much thinner. It would be trivial for regulators to spot some inside trades. And if the sources are indeed intelligence officials, I'd expect their financials to be under special scrutiny.

Everyone named in the article took a price hit that week. If you knew this article was coming you'd be well positioned for easy profit.

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#243

Post by asdff »

cm2187 wrote: post #4

Their stock price increased 30% from the drop after the publication of the article, but still 20% down from before the article. Though most of that is probably tech stocks tanking. So they are probably close to where they would have been without the article.

If you were a bad-faith source you would have anticipated this and profited from the movement in both directions. Short when the article is released, then take your profit and buy at an artificially low price.

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#244

Post by ryanlol »

pjc50 wrote: post #172
dragontamer wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a case of c) Reporters were completely reckless. They bought a small 0402 decoupling capacitor, put it on pencil tip, and then claimed that it was a chip that could hack your device. Any EE worth their salt knows exactly what 0402 decoupling capacitors do, and that there's no way you can hack from that angle. It has to do where that particular chip is placed: usually on power-lines... not really signal-traces…

A lot of people got hung up on the photos, but did the text actually state what they were or were they just "for illustrative purposes" like stock photos?

Bloomberg never indicated that the imaged chip wasn't the backdoor chip. The article repeatedly suggests that they're actually showing the backdoor chip.

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iNO3klzCOEj...

This image is captioned "Microchips found on altered motherboards in some cases looked like signal conditioning couplers."

You can easily find the article yourself here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#245

Post by asdff »

pmorici wrote: post #14
assblaster wrote: post #2

The question I have is: is it possible that there was such an incredible threat to national security that even an auditor could be convinced by a federal agency to give a false report? If it really didn't happen, how could a reputable news agency get a report so wrong? What exactly is going on here?

I think the most likely explanation is that Bloomberg got played by the sources who perhaps wanted to trade on the price action the story would obviously cause. We don't really know anything about Bloomberg's sources we do know the nature of all the parties denying any of this is true.

I think this is very realistic. These days prices move purely on speculation much more than they do on metrics like P/E. A source could have been in a short position, then after taking profit after the article was released could have bought up cheap shares. Thinking about the readership of Bloomberg, anything they publish will have a much larger market impact than an article in Ars. I think Bloomberg was played like a fiddle.

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#246

Post by danso »

ohithereyou wrote: post #173
pjc50 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, when looking at this, we have to remember that reporters aren't analysts ; they're not expected to have subject-specific background and make personal judgement calls as to what the underlying truth is. If you want that you can certainly get it - for a much higher price than a newspaper. That's what firms like Gartner are for. Reporters to a very large extent report what sources say . Their judgement comes in cons…

> [T]hey're not expected to have subject-specific background [...] Their judgement comes in considering the credibility of the source. Which they are unqualified to do if they do not have subject-specific background.

The journalist behind the Theranos expose, John Carreyrou, does not have a bio medical or startup/VC background.

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#247

Post by reissbaker »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #224
asituop wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that Huawei is the only and surely some other brands are even worse, but still Huawei phones are full of spyware, just open NetGuard or another example here : https://mobile.twitter.com/fs0c131y/status/10515681807480135... But once again surely other brands, Western companies included, are also spying, but it doesn't change the fact that Huawei does it too.

Can't open the link because of rate limiting - hn effect? Anyway, is any phone-home spying? What if it phones US servers, say Google's? Unfortunately I can't think of a popular brand that doesn't spy on its users (no matter what the reasons are).

It's not just a phone-home. It's sending your entire browsing history (unencrypted!): every web request you make gets sent back to servers in China.

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#248

Post by antoinealb »

exoesquitur wrote: post #233

From a technical perspective I found this story compelling, so I tried out a simple hack to see if it were "possible". Using an attiny85 uC, a couple resistors, a cap, and a couple diodes I had laying around, I was able to wire up a two terminal "device" that pretty much acts like a 5k pull up resistor on a I2C line.... But when you pass data through the signal line (SDA) wire it can read and modify it. It is crude a…

Curious about how you implemented this. Could you share the schematic somewhere ? It would be very interesting !

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#249

Post by nyc_pizzadev »

Seems like a lot of people don't know who to believe. Me too. Hasn't anyone pulled a few Supermicro boards and confirmed that this chip exists? It was reported that the chip might be inside the wafers, but still, that would make finding this a clear smoking gun.

Re: Super Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards

#250

Post by [deleted] »

indigochill wrote: post #179
pjc50 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, when looking at this, we have to remember that reporters aren't analysts ; they're not expected to have subject-specific background and make personal judgement calls as to what the underlying truth is. If you want that you can certainly get it - for a much higher price than a newspaper. That's what firms like Gartner are for. Reporters to a very large extent report what sources say . Their judgement comes in cons…

c) report it as what it is: unsubstantiated hearsay. A story can be interesting and relevant but impossible to prove, and you can still report it honestly by simply making it clear what came from an anonymous source and what is verifiable fact. But it's very easy (and appears to have happened all over the place in this particular article) to cite what someone tells you as fact without making it clear you're just repo…

[deleted]
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