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UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials

reuters.com

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Re: UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials

#61

Post by pvg »

dang wrote: post #57
pvg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a curious forum we're on where on one day there are jiggabytes spilled over how journalists get technical things wrong and on another, they're so reliably accurate, technology organizations making the case reporting on them is inaccurate must have been infiltrated by men in black and have had hapless employees flashed with a neuralyzer.

Can you please not post unsubstantive comments? HN has 5M monthly users. Obviously there isn't going to be any consistency.

It's not an 'unsubstantive' comment. There is a very large section of users who are ardent believers in the 'Gell-Mann amnesia' effect. There are also seemingly many, many users, as the one I'm replying to and many who've posted similar, highly voted comments on this thread whose explanation for the discrepancies between the reporting on this story and the company responses amount to (in my view) to MiB but with different acronyms. I find that curious. Maybe you don't, maybe you think those users don't overlap much or at all, that's fair enough. But 'things people find curious about HN that you think maybe aren't' is not 'unsubstantive' so get of my case, oppressor!

Re: UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials

#63

Post by tptacek »

pvg wrote: post #61
dang wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please not post unsubstantive comments? HN has 5M monthly users. Obviously there isn't going to be any consistency.

It's not an 'unsubstantive' comment. There is a very large section of users who are ardent believers in the 'Gell-Mann amnesia' effect. There are also seemingly many, many users, as the one I'm replying to and many who've posted similar, highly voted comments on this thread whose explanation for the discrepancies between the reporting on this story and the company responses amount to (in my view) to MiB but with diff…

This is a rare instance where I agree that 'dang has jumped the gun. I don't see how your comment is insubstantial either, and I think HN's weird relationship with the news media is worthy of comment. No reasonable person reads the comment above to mean "literally everyone on HN has inconsistent beliefs about the press".

Re: UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials

#64

Post by sorokod »

The actual quotes in Reuters article:

“We are aware of the media reports but at this stage have no reason to doubt the detailed assessments made by AWS and Apple,” "The NCSC engages confidentially with security researchers and urges anybody with credible intelligence about these reports to contact us"

This is not backing.

Re: UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials

#65

Post by Alex3917 »

tptacek wrote: post #63
pvg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an 'unsubstantive' comment. There is a very large section of users who are ardent believers in the 'Gell-Mann amnesia' effect. There are also seemingly many, many users, as the one I'm replying to and many who've posted similar, highly voted comments on this thread whose explanation for the discrepancies between the reporting on this story and the company responses amount to (in my view) to MiB but with diff…

This is a rare instance where I agree that 'dang has jumped the gun. I don't see how your comment is insubstantial either, and I think HN's weird relationship with the news media is worthy of comment. No reasonable person reads the comment above to mean "literally everyone on HN has inconsistent beliefs about the press".

> HN's weird relationship with the news media is worthy of comment

If I had said something about trusting Bloomberg or the media then sure. But that’s a completely different topic that’s not even remotely related to whether Apple’s denials on potential NSL issues are reliable.

Re: UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials

#66

Post by teknologist »

Easy to say if they cleaned up the evidence. What's convenient about recalling servers is that they're all neatly lined up in racks in datacenters, making them easy to pull out and replace. Supermicro would have lists of affected serial numbers, allowing them to take them back and make sure there aren't any samples lingering around for independent analysis.

Re: UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials

#67

Post by wyldfire »

I heard this on NPR [1] and thought it was interesting and hadn't seen it in these articles on HN:

> When [Bloomberg] asked China's foreign ministry for a response, a lot of times they'll say things like, you're crazy; we know nothing about this. Their response was a little more nuanced and contextual in the environment we're in now. Basically they said, we are a victim of these kinds of attacks, too. And, you know, they're right. The U.S. government - it's very, very good at these kinds of hardware attacks.

Supporting evidence for Bloomberg's claim: NSA interdiction of US export shipments [2].

[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/10/04/654518383/bloomberg-reporter-...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/12/glenn-greenwal...

Re: UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials

#68

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

sorokod wrote: post #10

“We are aware of the media reports but at this stage have no reason to doubt the detailed assessments made by AWS and Apple,” This is a pretty mild statement, would not say it backs Apple and Amazon.

It's not the UK's job to back Apple and Amazon.

"We have no reason to doubt" is not a weasel statement. "At this stage" is a weasel statement, but only in the sense that it means "We haven't investigated this or seen any evidence ourselves, and until we do we'll go with the line taken by Apple and AWS."

This can be taken as meaning "The US has given us details and asked us to deny them" - which makes no sense, IMO.

Or "The US has given us no details" - which is rather more likely.

Re: UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials

#69

Post by apeace »

tptacek wrote: post #27
beaker52 wrote: post #7

It could also be possible that these companies are legally bound by some sort of investigation-related order to maintain ignorance to the presence of the chips and that Bloomberg have just sunk an ongoing investigation/counter-espionage operation, potentially putting an associated intelligence network at risk.

They're not "maintaining ignorance"; they're categorically denying it, and in significant detail. Both Apple and Amazon produced essentially bulleted refutations of the story. That's not what you do when you're trying to brush something off.

Right. Wouldn't the inside sources also know if Apple/Amazon were somehow gagged? If you're going to leak the whole story, why not leak that part too?

Re: UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials

#70

Post by tptacek »

Alex3917 wrote: post #65
tptacek wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a rare instance where I agree that 'dang has jumped the gun. I don't see how your comment is insubstantial either, and I think HN's weird relationship with the news media is worthy of comment. No reasonable person reads the comment above to mean "literally everyone on HN has inconsistent beliefs about the press".

> HN's weird relationship with the news media is worthy of comment If I had said something about trusting Bloomberg or the media then sure. But that’s a completely different topic that’s not even remotely related to whether Apple’s denials on potential NSL issues are reliable.

How are those two topics not intimately related? The question of how reliable Apple's employees are is only relevant to the extent that you believe Bloomberg's reporters were competent in sourcing the story.
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