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Amazon Has Pulled Ads From Bloomberg Over Controversial 'Big Hack' Chinese Spy Story; Apple Has Not Invited Outlet's Reporters To a Product Event Next Week (buzzfeednews.com)
Both Amazon and Apple are taking retributive measures against Bloomberg, which in a report earlier this month alleged that some motherboards used by these companies were hacked by China. From a report: Amazon pulled its fourth quarter advertisements on Bloomberg's website, a move some within the media giant think is retribution for its controversial story alleging that Chinese spies hacked into the online retailer's servers. According to a source in position to know, Amazon's digital media buyer, Initiative, informed Bloomberg's sales staff on October 16 that it would cancel its ad buys for the fourth quarter due to budget cuts. Internally, the source said, the staff received that decision, made only eight days after a previous communication with Initiative confirming that the ads would run, as a direct response to Amazon's displeasure over the October 4 story. (Amazon announced Thursday that its marketing expenses for Q3 2018 were 3.3 billion dollars, up more than 800 million dollars from the year before.) [...] According to multiple sources, Bloomberg was not invited to Apple's fall product event next week in Brooklyn. Further reading: In an Unprecedented Move, Apple CEO Tim Cook Calls For Bloomberg To Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story.
They don't want to go through discovery, they just want to bury the news.
Feb 2017
https://appleinsider.com/artic...
https://www.macrumors.com/2017...
https://arstechnica.com/civis/...
Their claims that they knew nothing of this security issue from Supermicro has all the appererances of a PR cover up
It's the only way to hold so-called news reporters to any sort of standard.
Why should Apple or Amazon continue to deal with Bloomberg when Apple and Amazon think they've been the victim of false reporting?
I agree.
Plus, it's their ad money, and therefore totally their choice to spend it, or not, where they wish.
Neither Apple nor Amazon owe Bloomberg or anyone else ads. When an advertiser pulls ads from someone like Sean Hannity or Rosie in a blatant attempt to hurt those outlets, everyone here cheers. But Apple pulls ads from Bloomberg and the cries of unfairness are loud. Some people here will "never buy Apple" because, you know, Chinese slave labor and all that. You get to do that. You have that right. You get to make a political decision about where you spend your money. So do Apple and Amazon. It's nothing more complicated than that.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
The thing is, just recently LOTS of news orgs, and the government itself could find no evidence of what was reported - and both Apple and Amazon did not just give PR responses, but much stronger responses that would lead to large fines if they were lying.
Since everyone else on Earth is unable to verify the story, it's far more likely Bloomburg really screwed up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If SuperMicro is guilty of this, then all Bloomberg has to do is go online, but some boards and pay MIT or some other school with the facilities to find the malicious chips. That seems pretty logical right?
If the chips actually exist, they should be pretty easy to identify. Just cross reference the chips and the drivers and verify what is OEM, Chinese or otherwise and then reverse engineer them and simulate the hack.
This is not a difficult thing to do.
I know of a NATO government organization that has pulled the power from a stack of Nutanix servers because of this article. I asked them to prove to me that the story had any merit other than FUD and they explained that they pulled the plug because they need proof there is no merit not the other way around.
I think SuperMicro should sue the shit out of Bloomberg over this. So should Nutanix and every other company financially effected by this article. Then Bloomberg will be forced to either prove their claims ... at which point we can all apologize and thank them or they can suffer the hundreds of millions in losses over publishing this rubbish.
I'd guess that the story is true and the affected megacorps are trying to cover it up. I'd guess that these megacorps are cooperating with the TLAs investigating the issue, and don't want the story made public because they'd rather not go public about a data breach (at least not individually and earlier than necessary), which the TLAs would also prefer in this case. So the media would be both compromising the investigation and bringing bad PR to the victims by reporting on this.
In a couple years we'll probably hear that it was all true and the affected companies will jointly disclose the data breach.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It's almost certainly not intentionally false and provably motivated by malice. If the story is merely false, it isn't (legally) libel.
So while reading the "comments" where it seems everyone is accusing everyone else of being a shill, I couldn't help but thinking any number of them could actually be from Chinese or Russians, working against each other to either discredit the story or hype it up. As an American it seems strange to live in a world where everything around you has the potential to be tainted by foreign psyops, I imagine this must be a little bit like the third world felt during the cold war.
https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2018/10/05/making-sense-of-the-supermicro-motherboard-attack/
"Perhaps the animation is an artist’s concept only, but this is just the right place to compromise the BMC.
That's the Security Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, and they take no prisoners (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net