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AWS CEO Andy Jassy Follows Apple In Calling For Retraction of Chinese Spy Chip Story (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, followed Apple's lead in calling the for the retraction of Bloomberg's story about spy chips being embedded in servers. "They offered no proof, story kept changing, and showed no interest in our answers unless we could validate their theories," Jassy wrote in a tweet on Monday. "Reporters got played or took liberties. Bloomberg should retract."
Apple CEO Tim Cook told Buzzfeed on Friday that the scenario Bloomberg reported never happened and that the October story in Bloomberg Businessweek should be retracted. Bloomberg alleged data center hardware used by Apple and AWS, and provided by server company Super Micro, was under surveillance by the Chinese government, even though almost all the companies named in the report denied Bloomberg's claim. Bloomberg published a denial from AWS alongside its own report, and AWS refuted the report in a more strongly worded six-paragraph blog post entitled "Setting the Record Straight on Bloomberg Businessweek's Erroneous Article." Further reading is available via The Washington Post.
"Sources tell the Erik Wemple Blog that the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Post have each sunk resources into confirming the story, only to come up empty-handed," the Washington Post reports. "(The Post did run a story summarizing Bloomberg's findings, along with various denials and official skepticism.) It behooves such outlets to dispatch entire teams to search for corroboration: If, indeed, it's true that China has embarked on this sort of attack, there will be a long tail of implications. No self-respecting news organization will want to be left out of those stories. 'Unlike software, hardware leaves behind a good trail of evidence. If somebody decides to go down that path, it means that they don't care about the consequences,' Stathakopoulos says.'"
Apple CEO Tim Cook told Buzzfeed on Friday that the scenario Bloomberg reported never happened and that the October story in Bloomberg Businessweek should be retracted. Bloomberg alleged data center hardware used by Apple and AWS, and provided by server company Super Micro, was under surveillance by the Chinese government, even though almost all the companies named in the report denied Bloomberg's claim. Bloomberg published a denial from AWS alongside its own report, and AWS refuted the report in a more strongly worded six-paragraph blog post entitled "Setting the Record Straight on Bloomberg Businessweek's Erroneous Article." Further reading is available via The Washington Post.
"Sources tell the Erik Wemple Blog that the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Post have each sunk resources into confirming the story, only to come up empty-handed," the Washington Post reports. "(The Post did run a story summarizing Bloomberg's findings, along with various denials and official skepticism.) It behooves such outlets to dispatch entire teams to search for corroboration: If, indeed, it's true that China has embarked on this sort of attack, there will be a long tail of implications. No self-respecting news organization will want to be left out of those stories. 'Unlike software, hardware leaves behind a good trail of evidence. If somebody decides to go down that path, it means that they don't care about the consequences,' Stathakopoulos says.'"
The very mention of SuperMicro in the story means it's crap. Damned company can barely get their legit mobo components running, let alone some astoundingly sophisticated spy chip.
(/me gets his coat...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If it were just Apple, or Amazon claiming the story was false I'd be dubious.
But it's both companies. And the NSA, and every other news organization that has gone looking. All are coming up blank on this.
At some point you have to go with the "simplest answer is correct", which means that Bloomberg is wrong in this case. The real question to my mind is, how did they go so badly wrong.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If we can't trust Bloomberg, then who can we trust? It's almost as if the media companies are making shit up to fit their story narrative!
I so want to mod this Funny
Bloomberg violated the first principal of good journalism: if it bleeds, it leads. Motherboards don't bleed.
China calls for AWS and Apple to call for retraction of spy story.
" If somebody decides to go down that path, it means that they don't care about the consequences,' Stathakopoulos says.'"
Yeah, like China cares.
In case you missed it, China recently "disappeared" the head of INTERPOL, if they can do that without repercussions, they can do anything.
They offered no proof, story kept changing, and showed no interest in our answers unless we could validate their theories," Jassy wrote in a tweet on Monday.
Wait, that sounds familiar.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
They denied it, then denied it more fully, then followed up with a more clear and forceful denial. If it turns out to be true, the SEC will decide which executives they want to put in prison for material false statements.
The amount and type of denials aren't necessary and wouldn't be appropriate if the story was actually true. The executives have no reason put themselves at risk denying it in the *manner* that they have. If it were true, they'd very much want to use more Clintonian statements like "we have no knowledge of China installing a surveillance chip". That statement is technically true if they know *someone* installed a surveillance chip, but don't know that China did it. That denial would be true if they know that China installed a rogue chip, but don't know that it's necessarily a surveillance chip.
If it were true, I'd expect a detail like ""we have no knowledge of China installing a surveillance chip", something that is technically true so they'd at least have some negotiating room when the SEC comes after them for material false statements.
The "chip" is part of the CPU! Haven't you seen the video posted here of the Via root hack??!?
So Amazon is chipping in.
Table-ized A.I.
retractions are only made if they are absolutely forced to. Even then the original article will be left nearly intact with and asterix at the bottom grudgingly admitting the whole article is a fraud.
Obvious Russian troll is obvious.
The more people who push for a retraction, the more I believe it really happened. Maybe it's not the Chinese, though. Maybe it's the NSA or something. Either way, someone really got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and they are trying very very hard to squash the story.
THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES KEN DOLL FOR YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
You violated the first principle of being an author: know how to write.
To quote a Richard Bachman reviewer: "Thinner is the book that Stephen King could write if he knew how to write."
If such a chip was found then the first thing a reporter would/should do is consult with the NSA in case it was one of their chips.
But if they did that it would put the NSA in a difficult position. If they said it was their chip then they would surely prevent publication of the story. But they could never admit it was their chip. Therefore their response would always be denial. Instead they would need to find some other excuse to prevent publication of the story. And if they didn't prevent publication of the story then that could be construed as a tacit admission that it was not one of their chips. So I reckon the NSA would always deny it was one of theirs, and they would always prevent publication of such a story.
Therefore it can be conclusively proved that either Bloomberg never contacted the NSA before publishing their story or that this story emanated as deliberate misinformation from the NSA itself.
Even he knew how to spell, you fucking weirdo.
You're like this freak. They laughed at him too, Chris.
It's pretty obvious that the "source" for this story is Russia.
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Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition.
If thereâ(TM)s nothing behind Bloomberg story why big Aâ(TM)s donâ(TM)t sue ?
Even he knew how to spell, you fucking weirdo.
Using the wrong word is a grammar error and not a spelling error. One of Stephen King's greatest fear was that the publisher would publish his manuscript as is rather than be given editorial consideration. His errors tend to generate bags of fan mail back in the day.
They laughed at him too, Chris.
Does anyone care about what the peanut gallery have to say? It's easy to criticize creative people when you have nothing to offer society.
Please describe what grammar you wanted to achieve with "principal". A homophone is the definition of a spelling error, no matter how many italics you use.
"One of Stephen King's greatest fear"
See? I knew if you applied that "mind" of yours you could make real grammar errors! You wanted "fears". That's your crammar!
"Does anyone care about what the peanut gallery have to say? "
Um, you?
" It's easy to criticize creative people when you have nothing to offer society."
OK, I'll bite, which creative person are you referring to?
This isn't about stealing data - it's about killing servers in case of a war (remember the gulf war, the US disabled remotely all the telecoms kit the iraqis used?)
All you need is something tiny like, er, and ATTiny chip that's 1mm in size to do this, an MCU with a small receiver inbuilt
Stick that on a reset line, or get it to pull a data line/address line high on a computer, and you've effectively stopped that kit from working. VCC (or another quieter track) can be your antenna which listens in for the magic 'kill thyself' signal/code
War breaks out or you want to take over a country, simply send your signal out, and all of a sudden any infastructure using that motherboard/kit stops working causing maximum disruption (which is EXACTLY what you want when you're taking over the 'enemy')
Those nice warships running windows and other stuff? Well, that'll be fucked warship time then won't it.
No telecoms because call routing PCs won't boot up.
No datacentres because servers or routers won't work.
Power stations crapping out because, you know, cooling and safety systems stopped working.
The threat of this shit is quite real. Especially when you don't need to exfiltrate data, just 'kill kit'. At least nobody has wondered if you could hide an attiny/etc on a bit of silicon in a larger chip (northbridge, pcie controllers, sata controllers, etc, etc, - again, all you need to do is jam a single data/address line high, or generate a metric fuck-ton of interrupts)
If this story is true, wouldn't there be pictures of the spy chips on the motherboards? Or even X-rays proving their existence (in case the chips were somehow hidden within the board)? I trust Bloomberg, but this story does seem to not hold up to scrutiny.
I don't really know if the Bloomberg article is true, but if you believe that guys like Jeff Bezos or Tim Cook will EVER see the inside of a jail cell, I have a bridge to see you.
It be great if chris was worry about his write as much as care about markup his crap posts. At least he didn't feel the need to to everything
Bloomberg was intentionally being deceptive, of course. Fake news.