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Apple Insiders Say Nobody Internally Knows What's Going On With Bloomberg's China Hack Story (buzzfeednews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: Multiple senior Apple executives, speaking with BuzzFeed News on the condition of anonymity so that they could speak freely all denied and expressed confusion with a report earlier this week that the company's servers had been compromised by a Chinese intelligence operation. On Thursday morning, Bloomberg Businessweek published a bombshell investigation. The report -- the result of more than a year of reporting and over 100 interviews with intelligence and company sources -- alleged that Chinese spies compromised and infiltrated almost 30 U.S. companies including Apple and Amazon by embedding a tiny microchip inside company servers. Both Amazon and Apple issued uncharacteristically strong and detailed denials of Bloomberg's claims.
Reached by BuzzFeed News multiple Apple sources -- three of them very senior executives who work on the security and legal teams -- said that they are at a loss as to how to explain the allegations. These people described a massive, granular, and siloed investigation into not just the claims made in the story, but into unrelated incidents that might have inspired them. A senior security engineer directly involved in Apple's internal investigation described it as "endoscopic," noting they had never seen a chip like the one described in the story, let alone found one. "I don't know if something like this even exists," this person said, noting that Apple was not provided with a malicious chip or motherboard to examine. "We were given nothing. No hardware. No chips. No emails." Equally puzzling to Apple execs is the assertion that it was party to an FBI investigation -- Bloomberg wrote that Apple "reported the incident to the FBI." A senior Apple legal official told BuzzFeed News the company had not contacted the FBI, nor had it been contacted by the FBI, the CIA, the NSA or any government agency in regards to the incidents described in the Bloomberg report. This person's purview and responsibilities are of such a high level that it's unlikely they would not have been aware of government outreach.
Reached by BuzzFeed News multiple Apple sources -- three of them very senior executives who work on the security and legal teams -- said that they are at a loss as to how to explain the allegations. These people described a massive, granular, and siloed investigation into not just the claims made in the story, but into unrelated incidents that might have inspired them. A senior security engineer directly involved in Apple's internal investigation described it as "endoscopic," noting they had never seen a chip like the one described in the story, let alone found one. "I don't know if something like this even exists," this person said, noting that Apple was not provided with a malicious chip or motherboard to examine. "We were given nothing. No hardware. No chips. No emails." Equally puzzling to Apple execs is the assertion that it was party to an FBI investigation -- Bloomberg wrote that Apple "reported the incident to the FBI." A senior Apple legal official told BuzzFeed News the company had not contacted the FBI, nor had it been contacted by the FBI, the CIA, the NSA or any government agency in regards to the incidents described in the Bloomberg report. This person's purview and responsibilities are of such a high level that it's unlikely they would not have been aware of government outreach.
Remember when people used to answer "I cannot confirm on deny that such action has taken place"?
Nowadays they just flat out deny it. And then months later the truth comes up, heads roll, stock prices drop, investors buy the stock for pennies. Then people forget about it, stock prices go up, investors sell the stock, and make a lot of money.
Everyone's happy. The head that rolled? Got his golden parachute. The investors? They got a lot of money. Everyone else? Don't remember a thing.
..."we can neither confirm nor deny the story".
I'm not sure what to believe here.
In support of the story, China does have a long history of industrial espionage and other spying. Many believe that their economic rise was boosted by stolen IP.
On the other hand, the current administration is clearly using allegations against China to balance the revelations that continue to come out about Russian interference. Many of the allegations from this administration towards China appear to be completely fabricated.
But this allegation is much more detailed than anything the administration has been imagining, but the sources are all anonymous.
Engineers are not intimately involved in the design, support and software maintenance of their products.
I've worked with Apple, Dell and HP server design teams in a past life and it would be highly unlikely that anything could be added to the products by board stuffers without being discovered.
Typically for most vendors, the first failed products go straight to development to understand what the problem is to see if there are any design issues. One of the first thing that is done in the process is a review (usually by a junior engineer/technician) to make sure there haven't been any unapproved part substitutions - anything added at this point would be found. It should also be pointed out that Apple products have WiFi/BT built in which means FCC testing and that requires Apple to verify that the product is identical to what will be going down the line - if the PCB gets changed to add a chip without Apple's prior approval and validation by repeating the FCC testing then, based on the contracts I've seen and been a part of, Apple would be demanding huge amounts of compensation as well as making the vendor pay to roll the field.
This doesn't mean that Apple hasn't added the chips for US/other governmental snooping just that it's highly unlikely that the manufacturing partners added something without Apple's approval.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Option A: The Chinese have compromised Supermicro, and have spy chips embedded in every major datacenter and product from companies such as Apple, Amazon, Dell, etc. These publicly traded companies are now involved in the wholesale denial of this event taking place
Or, as someone who remembers the media blitz in the lead up to the Iraq war:
Option B: The Trump "administration" (slogan: "Not Nazis Only Because We're Too Incompetent) desperately wants a media disinformation campaign to sway national opinion against evil china, to make these coming 25% tariffs even more palatable to people who are going to be righteously pissed following this holiday season.
We have _already_ seen this agitprop bullshit ramping up here on compromised Slashdot this week. Anonymous Cowards, every single one. Sorry fascists, not buying it. Go fuck up someone else's industry.
Please, take a sample of those servers, open them and let a bunch of experts to investigate.
Is it that difficult?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Midterm elections, or quarterly reports... so complicated!
My colleagues and I were discussing this story last week. My research group has done some work in secure computing, and we were frankly surprised that someone would bother to add a compromised piece of hardware to a motherboard.
Software intrusions always provide plausible deniability to the attacker, which is critical to state-sponsored espionage. But a hardware hack, where someone succeeds in adding a component to a motherboard without the knowledge of the designer, is far more difficult and far more dangerous. A device in hand can be reverse-engineered, and forensics performed to determine exactly when and how it was inserted into the manufacturing chain. Experts can even determine the exact IC fab in which the chip was manufactured.
On top of that, a company that allows its manufacturing process to be compromised has essentially ruined itself. What customer would trust it again? Sure, it is possible that the Chinese government would be willing to spend the money to create a company that could be sacrificed to a state espionage effort, but the problem remains that if the espionage is uncovered, no one will trust any installed hardware purchased from them.
Software intrusions remain extremely successful. The Chinese purportedly breached the OPM and copied all of the personnel files for every U.S. citizen with a security clearance back in 2014, but to this day no one can be entirely sure who was behind it. Likewise, Russia constantly denies its own state-sponsored hacks. For that matter, so does the U.S.A., and everyone else. Why give up such a successful exploit vector in favor of one that provides an undeniable trail back to the perpetrator?
So exactly what is the story behind this Bloomberg article, and where is the proof that the hack actually happened? Someone needs to produce some hardware as proof. This story is definitely becoming even more interesting.
Oh, well, thank god then you've linked to such quality blogs proving the "Fake News" from Bloomberg whose "opposition to president Trump knows know bounds". I know blogspot and "godsavethepoints" are where I go when I'm looking for cutting edge investigative journalism and not a fart sniffing boomer echo chamber about muh fake news.
Quite frankly, Bloomberg got fooled by a bunch of people who, for whatever reason, gave them this story.
Why would people do this? I can think of a bunch of reasons off the top of my head:
* someone wanted SuperMicro to play ball, and they refused. This is payback.
* someone wanted SuperMicro's stock to fall, and fall a lot.
* someone wanted to demonstrate they could get the press to print anything, no matter how ridiculous.
* someone wanted to teach Bloomberg a lesson
* someone wanted to throw doubt on the Chinese supply chain. The one that supplies like all the electronics to the US.
* someone wanted China to share some of the attention
It could be all of the above. But really, the story is bullshit. The superchip is a story cooked up to fool reporters, reporters who are smart enough fool themselves into thinking they understand how computers work.
What I'm surprised at is that they didn't ask anyone in the industry about the details. You can always theoretically wire something into a mobo and hide it. You can't practically get something that small to do everything they said it could do. Even James Patterson could tell the difference.
If there's one thing i like about Apple it's their intense hatred for either doing the government's bidding or funding their attempts to do so.
If there's one thing I like about the Feds it's ... ok, there's nothing I like about the Feds but one can at least recognize that the powerful interests scratch each other's backs and Michael "Disarm the Jews" Bloomberg would be happy to help the FBI, et. al. build their case that Apple /must/ be /compelled/ to make iOS spy on its users for them, because "Apple can't even be trusted with its own security."
Look for natural alliances and opportunities to harm their common enemy. Apple isn't making me buy their walled-garden shit so on this one they're an ally of the people who want privacy and personal freedom.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Here's a couple possible scenarios.
1. The source of this is some spooky agency but they don't want people to know it was them that figured it out. SO the attribution went to Amazon discovering it. A plausible cover story at first as long as no one scratched too deep. the story was socialized within the government enough that every one believed it to be true so that's all bloomberg heard was this succefully engineered echo chamber of a story everyone believed was true. The chip part being true and the cover story of it's origin obfuscated.
The reason this would happen in this hasty way is that for obvious reasons the Trump administration needed to get out a story that shows china is a bad trading partner. SO timing was rushed. The three letter agency would not want it's discovery revealed because it like to shield sources and methods. So the compromise was blame it on amazon.
2. For whatever reason apple and amazon dumped some server farms or strategies. Later they realized they had dodged a bullet when the chip issue or mal frimware showed up in supermicro. They have to be really careful here because they could be sued for bad faith in the sales contracts and failure to disclose if it could be made to look like they knew for sure the Supermicro was poison. So they are trying very hard to say they had no knowledge of this (at the time) so this doesn't become a contractual issue.
Both of these stories might be true
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Why is Apple trying so hard to deny a story that Bloomberg insists is accurate and very well sourced?
Because the Bloomberg story is bollocks?
No idea, but the stuff they wrote about Germanies renewable energy was usually all the time I bothered to read it: bollocks.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why is Apple trying so hard to deny a story that Bloomberg insists is accurate and very well sourced? .... Because they all realize this has the potential to destroy the very core of their supply chains. This would be extremely disruptive and costly to their businesses
Apple does not produce server products, foxconn produces their motherboards, and they also have one of the most secure production chains in the industry.
That won't happen. At least it won't get reported on. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
China doesn't need to add any chips, the Intel PC architecture is such a bloody mess that all China would need to do is make changes to the firmware in order to get a permanent infection that is neither detectable not reversible without additional hardware tools.
The obvious match would be a logic + memory chip hooked into a serial firmware ROM (EEPROM/Flash whatever) data and clock path. This need only cause some kind of vulnerability that is unlikely to be triggered unintentionally but can be triggered remotely with a series of events (data packages most likely) - very hard to detect in a live system.
I still think this is either FUD or deliberate disinformation from some security group with some unknown agenda.
I'm not missing the anything for the anything. I wasn't born yesterday, and unlike the right-wing, I can think. Enjoy your anti-Chinese propaganda / movieland fantasy about the magical remote access chip that plugs directly into the BMI and injects code into the CPU any everything!
Everything else is a Lie. :)
Like they Could tell you.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
;) ;);)
Or maybe the carriers are in on it.
The device in question would have to either be fed a refclock or derive it's own clock, a PLL to either multiply the refclock or to derive it from the differential signal, have a small processor core, RAM, ROM, and some way to communicate with it, as well as being fed by one of the power rails, probably a 1.00V or 1.05V rail. In a 10nm or 14nm bare die you might be able to make it small enough and thin enough to hide between layers of the many-layer PCBs that are current technology -- or for that matter you might just make it a standard BGA surface-mount device, masquerading as a differential buffer or other differential device, like a mux, and hide it in plain sight, acting like the buffer it pretends to be, only revealing it's true purpose once it's triggered properly.
If I were any company potentially affected by this (which in this case is basically all companies) I'd be very quiet and vague about it, too. The implications are massive.
Bloomberg is a bunch of journalists. It's entirely expected that their verbiage would reduce the good description gp commenter made into a 'chip'.
Who has the better track record for reporting factually-based truths: Bloomberg or those tech companies?
Sadly, Bloomberg. Don't know what's going on as I haven't seen one opened --- so until that time I am withholding judgment as the hardware hacks have grown increasingly more sophisticated over the many years and have attended too many users forums in the past when technoid users discovered much of what the hardware was capable of, completely unknown to the designers.
I remember the naysayers about an academic (believe it was at a university in North Carolina or thereabouts) who uncovered a compromised dll file in Windows which was an NSA backdoor --- and found it to be correct.
I will continue to tune in . . .
Yeah. Once you have gone down the rabbit hole once - and the document leaks of the last 5 years have taken anyone who is technically inclined there at least once - you will have a hard time NOT thinking something like this is what happened.
Neither does Amazon. The articles have been very clear that theyr'e talking about Supermicro servers.
This is about cloud services. Apple doesn't run its cloud on Macs, if that's what you think.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
https://www.marketwatch.com/st...
For Apple too say there were not aware of security issues with Supermico is BS.
This story is getting really weird. One possibility could that the thing was invented by US agencies to support the trade war with China. After all they alredy invented Sadam Hussein's WMD to support a real war.
Most people don't need to be paid to think, perhaps you do? the story doesn't pass the smell test, I suspect what we have here is sources that were getting paid and hence made up something to get their money. Something of this scale doesn't stay secret and is very easily proven if true.
The main question is what prompted Bloomberg to publish this story in the first place.
They are well aware that the Chinese government carries grudges and will exact a large penalty from anyone harming China's interests.
So why would Bloomberg, a firm that historically has tried hard to avoid offending China, publish a story designed to damage the reputation of the Chinese subcontractor base? Given the importance of China in the world financial framework, they are not an entity Bloomberg would casually offend.
Yet they have done just that, with a very high profile story that is thus far lacking in hard evidence. What made Bloomberg, a very profit oriented firm, do that?
This. Possible need-to-know basis, and whoever got wind of it is gagged. Then, complete fabrication is also plausible, bloomberg isn't what it used to be when it comes to due diligence and impartiality in recent years.
So they contacted the FBI without going through Legal first? Or are you saying the anonymous source in the Legal department isn't talking because of the National Security Order (an NSL is only a request for information). Furthermore, Apple and other tech companies now have permission to give annual reports of how many NSO's they've received in the past year, so they all should've received one in 2015/16, that's easy to check.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Thank you for the link to Scott Adams' blog post complaining about a Bloomberg interview that he agreed to do despite believing it to be a planned "hit piece". The link to the actual excellently written and photographed Bloomberg interview that was found within Adams' blog was interesting and insightful. Hardly an example of poor journalism at Bloomberg - quite the opposite.
I enjoyed the early and mid Dilbert comics. I'm not a fan of Adams' current "philosophical" ramblings though.
The US government could produce gag orders, but the original story is that Apple employees went to the FBI. I would also like to know on which grounds there would be a gag order from the government. It doesn't make sense.
What is this 'glue logic' you refer to?
The right place would need bus signals and network access and power, and space for a signal coupler that looks plausible in that place.
'Glue logic' is the stuff in between all of that, that connects all of it.
Why would a signal coupler be needed? The 'bug' chip uses the resources of the system to communicate, in the spaces between the normal traffic.