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UK Cyber Security Agency Backs Apple, Amazon China Hack Denials (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Britain's national cyber security agency said on Friday it had no reason to doubt the assessments made by Apple and Amazon challenging a Bloomberg report that their systems contained malicious computer chips inserted by Chinese intelligence services. "We are aware of the media reports but at this stage have no reason to doubt the detailed assessments made by AWS and Apple," said the National Cyber Security Centre, a unit of Britain's eavesdropping agency, GCHQ. AWS refers to Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud-computing unit.
"The NCSC engages confidentially with security researchers and urges anybody with credible intelligence about these reports to contact us," it said. Apple's recently retired general counsel, Bruce Sewell, told Reuters he called the FBI's then-general counsel James Baker last year after being told by Bloomberg of an open investigation into Super Micro Computer, a hardware maker whose products Bloomberg said were implanted with malicious Chinese chips. "I got on the phone with him personally and said, 'Do you know anything about this?," Sewell said of his conversation with Baker. "He said, 'I've never heard of this, but give me 24 hours to make sure.' He called me back 24 hours later and said 'Nobody here knows what this story is about.'" The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Saturday that it too had no reason to doubt statements from companies that have denied the Bloomberg report.
"The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the media reports of a technology supply chain compromise," DHS said in a statement. "Like our partners in the UK, the National Cyber Security Center, at this time we have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story," it said.
"The NCSC engages confidentially with security researchers and urges anybody with credible intelligence about these reports to contact us," it said. Apple's recently retired general counsel, Bruce Sewell, told Reuters he called the FBI's then-general counsel James Baker last year after being told by Bloomberg of an open investigation into Super Micro Computer, a hardware maker whose products Bloomberg said were implanted with malicious Chinese chips. "I got on the phone with him personally and said, 'Do you know anything about this?," Sewell said of his conversation with Baker. "He said, 'I've never heard of this, but give me 24 hours to make sure.' He called me back 24 hours later and said 'Nobody here knows what this story is about.'" The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Saturday that it too had no reason to doubt statements from companies that have denied the Bloomberg report.
"The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the media reports of a technology supply chain compromise," DHS said in a statement. "Like our partners in the UK, the National Cyber Security Center, at this time we have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story," it said.
Therefore, their systems have backdoors.
Someone at Bloomberg shorting Supermicro stock?
This "Chinese cyber attack" is just a fake story planted by the Trump administration. It's the first step in blaming upcoming election rigging on China instead of our good friend Putin, who will be doing all he can to subvert the outcome.
Expect more manufactured evidence in the near future. Yellowcake anyone?
Maybe the whole thing is an elaborate stock market scam. Disrupt stock prices, make big profit for self and friends, then pay whatever pittance the SEC sanctions them with. ... rinse and repeat ...
of nothing. Right. Even Trump ain't that stupid. Looses lots of money, but pappy Trump was always there to bail him out. But not stupid. Demented? Sure. He's an old fat toadstoo! fuck. Not as nutty as Pence. Have you ever listened to that guy? Old men. Should be put out to pasture. Same with old women. I'm talking to you Maine.
First - given the unusually specific, no-bones-about-it wording used by Apple in their denial, I believe their statement. Some of the other companies, though, seemed to be giving themselves a bit of maneuvering room.
But both the UK’s and US’s spy agency statements basically just say “we have seen no evidence as of yet”. It’s a very careful statement which doesn’t really mean much.
#DeleteChrome
It's a totally true statement that Supermicro is not placing backdoors for the Chinese into their products.
For Western governments like the increasingly-Orwellian UK and the US hot on it's Big-Brother surveillance-State heels?
Not so much.
But they have a gun and a CC permit by choice. By all means Darwin yourself, the gene-pool is in dire need of a good skimming to remove regressive scum.
They will never admit their brand new Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers have a Chinese kill switch or backdoor built into all of its servers. Never.
Apple will never admit they bought those things either.
Amazon is the same. They provide cloud services to the US DoD, therefore they will never admit it because it would terrible for business.
Letâ(TM)s just assume its true and wait until someone finds one of these to examine at one of those companies that sells used servers.
"The thing is nobody has produced any evidence that China has done so" Yet Trump asserts it happened without evidence, continues to deny Putin meddled which directly put Trump in power. = Trump is beholden to Putin, period.
I have a number of Supermicro servers. I spent Friday poring over Wireshark logs looking for evidence of any kind of a command and control connection. I found nothing.
I don't trust Bloomberg for technical issues like this.
Any ideas what I should be looking for?
Greed is the root of all evil.
The ISIS news organization of Afghanistan vehemently agrees with the statements of the US corporations, saying: "Although we lack we capability of unobstructed travel to the said facilities where these systems have supposedly been installed and physical access to the affected systems boards, we see no reason not to vehemently agree with the statements made relating to this issue."
This is pure PR spin. Ignore the issue, and it will die in time. If true then Amazon and Apple have some explaining to do...not the least of which would be a loss of CIA money, and exposing themselves to huge class action lawsuits. Nothing to see hear, what chips, what information..., Mueller..., Mueller..., Mueller.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/
While their assertions are hard to verify, if found contrary they would be in a heap of trouble. Plausible denial perhaps. But if anyone knows and Snowden scenario leaks then lawyers get richer.
"find anything differing from the original"
It's supposed to be a signal conditioner with network access and processor in it, an XRay should reveal it, as should a heat camera even without tracing lines on the PCB. If there are 50 of these, you're looking for the one with power lines and according to BenJeremy, I2C lines, but then how does it get network access or modify the OS to 'make it modifiable' (as per the article) if its I2C?
This is supposed to be a known thing for the last 3 years by the major companies, and yet the leak goes to Bloomberg and once the story is broke, everyone continues to hush up?
"Super micro could know by comparing their cad files to what's being sold... "
If its not on every board, YOU or I could simply compare two boards for the difference, if it IS on every board YOU or I could grab one of these Supermicro boards and take a look for the chip.
IMHO, you comment seeks to pretend it would be too difficult to find this chip, which is bollocks.
You know, this kind of overreaction and twisting of reality is what got us Trump to start with. Keep it up, candyass, and we'll end up with his retarded ass for another 6 years instead of two.
Till they decide otherwise, and brick all the already repaired and currently working MacBooks
Only it is not Supermicro servers or imaginary Chinese spy chips but Bloomberg news
The UK is the dirty deep state.
Supermicro already had a big issue with their Quad and maybe Dual G34 boards when running full banks of memory. They would either fail to detect or fail to run with all memory slots in use due to issues in the motherboard design. Given that people buying those boards wanted them for the 512GB/1TB of memory capacity they offered, it was a pretty big issue.