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The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

theguardian.com

1–10 of 38 posts

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#2
This article is a summary of the current state of affairs; There is no new information, and does not answer the question in the headline.

Bloomberg says a spy chip was discovered and Apple and Amazon worked with the government to investigate. Apple and Amazon both deny the story is correct.

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#3
post #2

This article is a summary of the current state of affairs; There is no new information, and does not answer the question in the headline. Bloomberg says a spy chip was discovered and Apple and Amazon worked with the government to investigate. Apple and Amazon both deny the story is correct.

With the government’s involvement in this international matter, especially considering it’s China, is it possible that there’s a gag order preventing them from saying anything?

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#4
post #3
post #2

This article is a summary of the current state of affairs; There is no new information, and does not answer the question in the headline. Bloomberg says a spy chip was discovered and Apple and Amazon worked with the government to investigate. Apple and Amazon both deny the story is correct.

With the government’s involvement in this international matter, especially considering it’s China, is it possible that there’s a gag order preventing them from saying anything?

Their strenuous, detailed denials, personally given by individual senior officers seem to go very far beyond what a gag order would require.

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#5
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the government’s involvement in this international matter, especially considering it’s China, is it possible that there’s a gag order preventing them from saying anything?

Their strenuous, detailed denials, personally given by individual senior officers seem to go very far beyond what a gag order would require.

So detailed they sounded suspicious to some: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuspiciouslySpec...

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#6
Personally I wouldn't be surprised if there was a backdoor of some sort in the firmware or deniable known vulnerabilities to exploit but just a spy chip seems too Hollywood and symbolic given other approaches - adding a 'parasite' to corrupt it when they can just integrate it such that a very expensive and detailed analysis would be needed to find it.

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#8

Personally I wouldn't be surprised if there was a backdoor of some sort in the firmware or deniable known vulnerabilities to exploit but just a spy chip seems too Hollywood and symbolic given other approaches - adding a 'parasite' to corrupt it when they can just integrate it such that a very expensive and detailed analysis would be needed to find it.

Yeah - it does not look impressive when we have read about the possible backdoors inside processors: https://www.wired.com/2016/06/demonically-clever-backdoor-hi... But on the other hand maybe they were just testing the waters - it was in 2015 after all.

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#9

Personally I wouldn't be surprised if there was a backdoor of some sort in the firmware or deniable known vulnerabilities to exploit but just a spy chip seems too Hollywood and symbolic given other approaches - adding a 'parasite' to corrupt it when they can just integrate it such that a very expensive and detailed analysis would be needed to find it.

That's the holy grail so why not try it? They can plant 2-3 and milk them while they can. Maybe one is discovered, quite a few boards are never replaced and so on.

Re: The tech giants, the US and the Chinese spy chips that never were; or were they?

#10
post #2

This article is a summary of the current state of affairs; There is no new information, and does not answer the question in the headline. Bloomberg says a spy chip was discovered and Apple and Amazon worked with the government to investigate. Apple and Amazon both deny the story is correct.

> There is no new information,

It links to the Cambridge university security team blog and they say Bloomberg's claim passes the sniff test.

https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2018/10/05/making-sense-...

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