Apple denies claim China slipped spy chips into its iCloud server hardware [u]

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Comments

  • Reply 81 of 118
    radarthekatradarthekat Posts: 3,842moderator
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    The Bloomberg story seems politically motivated...

    There isn’t enough information do determine fault in the separate firmware incident.  It also doesn’t say if Apple resumed using SuperMicro as a supplier...

    Bottom line is Apple found a problem and addressed it before it could cause damage.  We don’t know the results of their investigation into whom was responsible.  Was the firmware modified by a third party?  Was it a beta firmware? Was the hardware intercepted and modified after leaving the manufacturer, but before getting to Apple and an exploit introduced?

    No enough information... but Bloomberg needs to get their facts straight before publishing rumors.
    Bloomberg says they DO have their facts straight.
    "The companies’ denials are countered by six current and former senior national security officials, who—in conversations that began during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration—detailed the discovery of the chips and the government’s investigation. One of those officials and two people inside AWS provided extensive information on how the attack played out at Elemental and Amazon; the official and one of the insiders also described Amazon’s cooperation with the government investigation. In addition to the three Apple insiders, four of the six U.S. officials confirmed that Apple was a victim. In all, 17 people confirmed the manipulation of Supermicro’s hardware and other elements of the attacks. The sources were granted anonymity because of the sensitive, and in some cases classified, nature of the information."

    He said, she said...
    He said, she said...  but where is there even one of these servers that can be shown with the rumored chip, and more germaine, let’s see one that was ever in Apple’s server farms.  
    No one claimed there was one installed at an Apple server farm AFAIK. If anything it was in an Apple lab, and even that is still a very open question. The claims regarding Amazon are more involved, yet Amazon too categorically denies there's any truth whatsoever to anything Bloomberg reported, it wa all made up.  All very very weird. 
    I set a bit of a trap for you and you fell into it.  I knew you’d answer the second part of my question without making any comment in the bigger question; if Bloomberg has 17 sources (which seems a big deal to you) and if there were thousands of these affected severs, then why aren’t you also curious about not a single server having surfaced for inspection by the story’s reporters?  

    Whole lot of smoke, no smoking gun. 
    edited October 2018 anantksundaramJanNL
  • Reply 82 of 118
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    The Bloomberg story seems politically motivated...

    There isn’t enough information do determine fault in the separate firmware incident.  It also doesn’t say if Apple resumed using SuperMicro as a supplier...

    Bottom line is Apple found a problem and addressed it before it could cause damage.  We don’t know the results of their investigation into whom was responsible.  Was the firmware modified by a third party?  Was it a beta firmware? Was the hardware intercepted and modified after leaving the manufacturer, but before getting to Apple and an exploit introduced?

    No enough information... but Bloomberg needs to get their facts straight before publishing rumors.
    Bloomberg says they DO have their facts straight.
    "The companies’ denials are countered by six current and former senior national security officials, who—in conversations that began during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration—detailed the discovery of the chips and the government’s investigation. One of those officials and two people inside AWS provided extensive information on how the attack played out at Elemental and Amazon; the official and one of the insiders also described Amazon’s cooperation with the government investigation. In addition to the three Apple insiders, four of the six U.S. officials confirmed that Apple was a victim. In all, 17 people confirmed the manipulation of Supermicro’s hardware and other elements of the attacks. The sources were granted anonymity because of the sensitive, and in some cases classified, nature of the information."

    He said, she said...
    He said, she said...  but where is there even one of these servers that can be shown with the rumored chip, and more germaine, let’s see one that was ever in Apple’s server farms.  
    No one claimed there was one installed at an Apple server farm AFAIK. If anything it was in an Apple lab, and even that is still a very open question. The claims regarding Amazon are more involved, yet Amazon too categorically denies there's any truth whatsoever to anything Bloomberg reported, it wa all made up.  All very very weird. 
    I set a bit of a trap for you and you fell into it.  I knew you’d answer the second part of my question without making any comment in the bigger question; if Bloomberg has 17 sources (which seems a big deal to you) and if there were thousands of these affected severs, then why aren’t you also curious about not a single server having surfaced for inspection by the story’s reporters?  

    Whole lot of smoke, no smoking gun. 
    A trap? For what reason? You really wanted me back? Odd...

    There was no claim of any malware making it into any Apple server system. Nor was there a claim of thousands of malware-infected Apple servers. In fact Apple was barely mentioned No idea where you and others are getting that from. Certainly not Bloomberg. And if you already knew that why imply there was and mislead readers who don't follow every comment?

    So rather than "setting a trap" I think it's more likely you hadn't bothered reading the article before making your comments or you would have known better. Kinda like trying to kick someone and missing to fall flat on your back and then saying "I meant to do that". Seems silly but whatever. 
    edited October 2018 ronn
  • Reply 83 of 118
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,309member
    tmay said:
    sarthos said:
    I find it difficult to believe that Bloomberg would risk fabricating this whole story.  It seems more likely that deals were made behind the scenes to use this to pressure China to back off on IP theft and open up their markets.  Apple and Amazon would benefit from this much more than pissing off China by going public.
    That is a nonsensical conspiracy theory. AAPL fell over $4 today; AMZN fell by an even greater percentage than Apple. The change in the market value of these two stock alone explains a considerable chunk of today's fall in the NASDAQ and the DOW (i.e., the fall in their price is the leading cause, not the effect, of the market decline today).

    This is not the kind of risk-taking that Apple is into, period. I'll (charitably) assume that you don't much about the company.
    FAANG stocks were down primarily because of fear of regulation.

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/cyber-security-stocks-fall-as-investors-shrug-off-china-spy-threat-2018-10-04
    What regulation should Apple be afraid of?
    Nothing I suspect, but they are part of FAANG, so investors downgrade them all, or that is at least an explanation for Apple's drop along with the others.
  • Reply 84 of 118
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,328member
    Maybe I’m jaded from being a veteran of the Cold War, but my baseline assumption has always been that massive levels of surveillance have always been, and still are, being conducted around the clock by a legion of people on all sides, against friend and foe alike, and involving government and aligned industry players around the world. The wall may have come down and most of the relics of Cold War machinery may be rotting in dumps, uniformed forces may have been reduced in size, but the military-industrial complex is still massive, extremely well funded, and has infused itself into all facets of current society and is most assuredly feasting on the very rich and high volume information sources available for easy harvesting. I’d be absolutely shocked if the vast majority of telecommunications gear, connected computing resources, remotely accessible massive data stores, and of course the infrastructure that moves everything along is not specifically designed with remote telemetry and data siphoning in mind. From a national security perspective it would be irresponsible for nation states to not exploit the many opportunities that are available through whatever means necessary. For the players involved, money is no object, accountability is not a concern, and the general population and companies like Apple never need to know what’s really going on. Suggest reading “Blind Man’s Bluff” book or watching the video with the same name on YouTube to get a taste of what was going on with Flintstones level technology in the 1960s and 1970s, which is nothing compared to what we have today. Paranoid? No. Realistic? Yes. 
    muthuk_vanalingamfastasleep
  • Reply 85 of 118
    It’s beyond imagination that someone would add a chip to a motherboard and think it would not be noticed. This doesn’t pass the smell test.
  • Reply 86 of 118
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    The Bloomberg story seems politically motivated...

    There isn’t enough information do determine fault in the separate firmware incident.  It also doesn’t say if Apple resumed using SuperMicro as a supplier...

    Bottom line is Apple found a problem and addressed it before it could cause damage.  We don’t know the results of their investigation into whom was responsible.  Was the firmware modified by a third party?  Was it a beta firmware? Was the hardware intercepted and modified after leaving the manufacturer, but before getting to Apple and an exploit introduced?

    No enough information... but Bloomberg needs to get their facts straight before publishing rumors.
    Bloomberg says they DO have their facts straight.
    "The companies’ denials are countered by six current and former senior national security officials, who—in conversations that began during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration—detailed the discovery of the chips and the government’s investigation. One of those officials and two people inside AWS provided extensive information on how the attack played out at Elemental and Amazon; the official and one of the insiders also described Amazon’s cooperation with the government investigation. In addition to the three Apple insiders, four of the six U.S. officials confirmed that Apple was a victim. In all, 17 people confirmed the manipulation of Supermicro’s hardware and other elements of the attacks. The sources were granted anonymity because of the sensitive, and in some cases classified, nature of the information."

    He said, she said...
    He said, she said...  but where is there even one of these servers that can be shown with the rumored chip, and more germaine, let’s see one that was ever in Apple’s server farms.  
    No one claimed there was one installed at an Apple server farm AFAIK. If anything it was in an Apple lab, and even that is still a very open question. The claims regarding Amazon are more involved, yet Amazon too categorically denies there's any truth whatsoever to anything Bloomberg reported, it wa all made up.  All very very weird. 
    I set a bit of a trap for you and you fell into it.  I knew you’d answer the second part of my question without making any comment in the bigger question; if Bloomberg has 17 sources (which seems a big deal to you) and if there were thousands of these affected severs, then why aren’t you also curious about not a single server having surfaced for inspection by the story’s reporters?  

    Whole lot of smoke, no smoking gun. 
    A trap? For what reason? You really wanted me back? Odd...
    Because people are getting tired of the usual Apple FUD pellet droppers, and their predictable narratives. Like yours.
    anantksundaramRayz2016
  • Reply 87 of 118
    jdwjdw Posts: 1,324member
    Absolutely hilarious!  This time around, AppleInsider let's freedom reign (a good thing) by leaving comments open but MacRumors (who is much more gracious when it comes to allowing comments on articles of any kind) has marked their similar article as being limited to those with 100 posts or more, filed in their politics forum!  Ha!  No complaints about the liberty granted to us under this AppleInsider article, but I cannot help but find it all quite amusing how comments are allowed or banned on articles.  :-)  So long as one errs on the side of liberty, one has erred wisely!

    As to the AppleInsider article itself...

    With all the FAKE NEWS we consistently see everywhere, it's less shocking to me that such false news is so prevalent (the news media makes money off being provocative) and more shocking that people still willingly and gladly watch, read and listen to it.  NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, The Atlantic (in which Job's wife has a majority stake), Vox, The New York Post, FOX, Drudge Report, Breitbart, The Blaze and supermarket tabloids are all the same bag of hurt, just with different slants.  It takes time to glean your own news from the internet, and sometimes even that winds up being fake too, but sadly we really can't trust any one "official source."  Thankfully, AppleInsider does a good job of delivering the straight scoop on the most important news -- Apple news!
  • Reply 88 of 118
    tmay said:
    tmay said:
    sarthos said:
    I find it difficult to believe that Bloomberg would risk fabricating this whole story.  It seems more likely that deals were made behind the scenes to use this to pressure China to back off on IP theft and open up their markets.  Apple and Amazon would benefit from this much more than pissing off China by going public.
    That is a nonsensical conspiracy theory. AAPL fell over $4 today; AMZN fell by an even greater percentage than Apple. The change in the market value of these two stock alone explains a considerable chunk of today's fall in the NASDAQ and the DOW (i.e., the fall in their price is the leading cause, not the effect, of the market decline today).

    This is not the kind of risk-taking that Apple is into, period. I'll (charitably) assume that you don't much about the company.
    FAANG stocks were down primarily because of fear of regulation.

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/cyber-security-stocks-fall-as-investors-shrug-off-china-spy-threat-2018-10-04
    What regulation should Apple be afraid of?
    Nothing I suspect, but they are part of FAANG, so investors downgrade them all, or that is at least an explanation for Apple's drop along with the others.
    That makes no sense. Sorry. You’re conflating FANG and FAANG. 

    Apple has little regulatory risk in the US. 
    edited October 2018
  • Reply 89 of 118
    eideardeideard Posts: 428member
    Our family compound is all retirees. Consequently, Bloomberg TV is running a fair piece of time, background or closely watched, to keep track of investments we have made to supplement Social Security.  If you watch Bloomberg over a period of time, you know the party line is Apple ain't great, doesn't deserve the success it enjoys, in general, regardless of generally positive commentary by guest tech analysts - Bloomberg ain't happy about Apple.

    If you catch the Asian feed - as I do to check on US and EU futures before I hit the sack - you'd know that one entity they dislike more than Apple is China.  Something that many analysts truly experienced and knowledgeable about the Chinese economy challenge them about.  On air.

    Oh, you may wonder why we continue to watch Bloomberg TV, etc.?  Many of their analysts and staff have the independence to differ - and often do on a range of topics.  In general, they are the best of a bad lot.  Their competition - for example CNBC or for real crap, Fox Business News - mostly sucks full time.
    GeorgeBMac
  • Reply 90 of 118
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,309member
    tmay said:
    tmay said:
    sarthos said:
    I find it difficult to believe that Bloomberg would risk fabricating this whole story.  It seems more likely that deals were made behind the scenes to use this to pressure China to back off on IP theft and open up their markets.  Apple and Amazon would benefit from this much more than pissing off China by going public.
    That is a nonsensical conspiracy theory. AAPL fell over $4 today; AMZN fell by an even greater percentage than Apple. The change in the market value of these two stock alone explains a considerable chunk of today's fall in the NASDAQ and the DOW (i.e., the fall in their price is the leading cause, not the effect, of the market decline today).

    This is not the kind of risk-taking that Apple is into, period. I'll (charitably) assume that you don't much about the company.
    FAANG stocks were down primarily because of fear of regulation.

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/cyber-security-stocks-fall-as-investors-shrug-off-china-spy-threat-2018-10-04
    What regulation should Apple be afraid of?
    Nothing I suspect, but they are part of FAANG, so investors downgrade them all, or that is at least an explanation for Apple's drop along with the others.
    That makes no sense. Sorry. You’re conflating FANG and FAANG. 

    Apple has little regulatory risk in the US. 
    Fair enough, do you see a reason for the drop?
  • Reply 91 of 118
    irnchrizirnchriz Posts: 1,616member
    Bloomberg, and others love creating these articles, they are protected from revealing sources because of press protections which allows them to run these fantasies to push down share prices on 2 of the largest companies.  They should take a look at who dumped Amazon and Apple stock just prior to and immediately after this was published who then buy back in once the price has stopped tumbling. Then see who benefitted and their relation to the creator of the article.
  • Reply 92 of 118
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,273member
    I'll just leave this here: Apple and Amazon are under considerable legal constraints that basically amount to "everything said officially has to be true to the best of the executives'/board officers' knowledge."

    Bloomberg is under no such restriction; libel/defamation laws don't apply to characterizations of corporations to the same degree as with people, because they're not people (except when they are, of course ...). So, given these facts, I'm siding with Amazon and Apple -- unnamed intelligence officials can repeat rumours and misinformation just like normal people, so it would time for them to put up or shut up.
    edited October 2018
  • Reply 93 of 118
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    The Bloomberg story seems politically motivated...

    There isn’t enough information do determine fault in the separate firmware incident.  It also doesn’t say if Apple resumed using SuperMicro as a supplier...

    Bottom line is Apple found a problem and addressed it before it could cause damage.  We don’t know the results of their investigation into whom was responsible.  Was the firmware modified by a third party?  Was it a beta firmware? Was the hardware intercepted and modified after leaving the manufacturer, but before getting to Apple and an exploit introduced?

    No enough information... but Bloomberg needs to get their facts straight before publishing rumors.
    Bloomberg says they DO have their facts straight.
    "The companies’ denials are countered by six current and former senior national security officials, who—in conversations that began during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration—detailed the discovery of the chips and the government’s investigation. One of those officials and two people inside AWS provided extensive information on how the attack played out at Elemental and Amazon; the official and one of the insiders also described Amazon’s cooperation with the government investigation. In addition to the three Apple insiders, four of the six U.S. officials confirmed that Apple was a victim. In all, 17 people confirmed the manipulation of Supermicro’s hardware and other elements of the attacks. The sources were granted anonymity because of the sensitive, and in some cases classified, nature of the information."

    He said, she said...
    He said, she said...  but where is there even one of these servers that can be shown with the rumored chip, and more germaine, let’s see one that was ever in Apple’s server farms.  
    No one claimed there was one installed at an Apple server farm AFAIK. If anything it was in an Apple lab, and even that is still a very open question. The claims regarding Amazon are more involved, yet Amazon too categorically denies there's any truth whatsoever to anything Bloomberg reported, it wa all made up.  All very very weird. 
    I set a bit of a trap for you and you fell into it.  I knew you’d answer the second part of my question without making any comment in the bigger question; if Bloomberg has 17 sources (which seems a big deal to you) and if there were thousands of these affected severs, then why aren’t you also curious about not a single server having surfaced for inspection by the story’s reporters?  

    Whole lot of smoke, no smoking gun. 
    A trap? For what reason? You really wanted me back? Odd...
    Because people are getting tired of the usual Apple FUD pellet droppers, and their predictable narratives. Like yours.

    That's the thing about GoogleGuy: his reason for living seems to be to undermine Apple and sell Google at every opportunity, while trying to present a rather unconvincing persona as a concerned, but ultimately impartial observer.

    Still, in cases like these, where we have denials from both Amazon and Apple, and no tangible evidence from Bloomberg, you have to wonder why he is so desperate to keep this rumour alive, especially since he said he was going to drop out of the thread on Page 2. Does he really believe it has legs, or is he merely attempting to divert attention from somewhere else?

    I ask because Google's Dragonfly project has been causing quiet ructions around the internet for quite some time, leading to some rather noisy recent departures from the company.

    And now, in the last day or so, the rumbles are becoming a little bit loud because Mike Pence has now decided it's something he should be talking about.

    https://www.cnet.com/news/google-should-end-development-of-dragonfly-search-engine-for-china-says-pence/
    https://www.techtimes.com/articles/234346/20180916/google-employees-resign-in-protest-of-project-dragonfly-a-censored-search-engine-for-china.htm
    https://theintercept.com/2018/09/14/google-china-prototype-links-searches-to-phone-numbers/


    One of Google Guy's favourite sticks he likes to beat Apple with is the handover of its iCloud operations to a Chinese company (we shall ignore small details such as it being a requirement by Chinese law, and that Apple has claimed it still retains control of the keys), because Google, being such a champion of truth and justice, has steered clear of China (let's ignore small details such as China's homegrown search engine was handing them their heads and that the Chinese government thinks the only body that should be allowed to harvest data is the Chinese government).

    But now it appears that Google is heading back into China with a specialised search engine that will allow the Chinese Authority to track its users. Is this true?

    The employees resigning in numbers seem to think so.
    Various IT journals seem to think so too.
    And Google hasn't denied it.

    I wonder if GoogleGuy would be happy to accept this as a given, without any names or credible evidence backing it up or a straight out denial from the Mothership? I mean, he seems happy to accept Bloomberg's word under even less compelling evidence.
    edited October 2018 StrangeDays
  • Reply 94 of 118
    Perhaps it is time for Apple to take back control of their servers by building their own. They probably could sell a few to others too. 
  • Reply 95 of 118
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    The Bloomberg story seems politically motivated...

    There isn’t enough information do determine fault in the separate firmware incident.  It also doesn’t say if Apple resumed using SuperMicro as a supplier...

    Bottom line is Apple found a problem and addressed it before it could cause damage.  We don’t know the results of their investigation into whom was responsible.  Was the firmware modified by a third party?  Was it a beta firmware? Was the hardware intercepted and modified after leaving the manufacturer, but before getting to Apple and an exploit introduced?

    No enough information... but Bloomberg needs to get their facts straight before publishing rumors.
    Bloomberg says they DO have their facts straight.
    "The companies’ denials are countered by six current and former senior national security officials, who—in conversations that began during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration—detailed the discovery of the chips and the government’s investigation. One of those officials and two people inside AWS provided extensive information on how the attack played out at Elemental and Amazon; the official and one of the insiders also described Amazon’s cooperation with the government investigation. In addition to the three Apple insiders, four of the six U.S. officials confirmed that Apple was a victim. In all, 17 people confirmed the manipulation of Supermicro’s hardware and other elements of the attacks. The sources were granted anonymity because of the sensitive, and in some cases classified, nature of the information."

    He said, she said...
    I find it utterly inconceivable that Apple -- especially Tim Cook -- would not be at least as concerned about such a security intrusion as some Bloomberg reporters or unnamed "former senior security officials" (it's the same crowd that kept harassing Apple to create backdoors and to give intrusive access to iOS devices to the likes of the FBI).

    I am quite satisfied -- as both a consumer and a shareholder -- with Apple's unambiguous denial of this claim. I'd take Apple's word over that of these media/Washington DC types.
    If Bloomberg is wrong, nobody will care in a month.

    If Apple is lying, then the SEC will ultimately dole out a massive fine and the entire saga will be in the press for a very long time.

    Yeah. I'm pretty sure that Apple's presenting the situation accurately.
    I suspect this is a national security issue which means the involved players can deny all they want without fear of the SEC who would be prevented from interfering or involving themselves if it's truly an active case.  The Bloomberg articles says as much, that it's still an open and classified investigation.

    On top of that there never were allegations of a "wide-spread attack" on Apple's servers as alluded to in the AI article so of course that's deniable, and calling any source making that claim (they haven't) laughable might be perfectly appropriate.

    Every reference to Apple in the investigative piece (and they were few) indicates Apple caught this early on, never once implying it was persistent and widespread. Amazon also denies anything happened and the whole thing is made up, someone's imagination, despite 17 sources including 6 hi-level current and former intelligence officials claiming otherwise. 
    That’s not correct.

    A gag order like an NSL does not give you carte blanche to make up stuff. You just have to neither confirm or deny - which typically means say nothing or very little.

    if Apple is lying, they have committed a serious breach of SEC regulations as stuff like this effects the share price.

    Bloomberg faces no such penalty, unless it could be proven they were manipulating stock prices. They’ve been increasingly negative on Apple all year, so maybe, but without something exceptional in evidence  they have nothing to lose by lying or playing fast and loose with the truth. Balance of probabilities is Bloomberg are either wrong (deliberately or accidentally) or got played by their “sources”.




    StrangeDays
  • Reply 96 of 118
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    The more specific the denials the more strange this whole thing becomes.

    I don't know of Apple ever being so detailed and vehement in response to a story. When the BBC ran their hit piece on Apple and working conditions in China Mr Cook responded with an internal email leaked to the press. This time Apple came back hard and often in denials. Amazon too has gone with a point by point rebuttal, and likewise I don't recall a similar response in the past.

    At the same time the number of governments sources who would have had to work in concert to cooperate on spreading disinformation thru false statements to Bloomberg is unexplainable, I'm reaching the point personally of leaning towards Apple and Amazon,generally speaking the truth,  but there's really significant questions about what the goal of the both the sources and Bloomberg was if the entire scene was fabricated. It wasn't an Apple hit-piece as they were barely mentioned. It might have been an Amazon hit-piece, but why? No love lost between US intelligence and China but why drag Amazon into it if that was the rationale?

    I would certainly expect some greater detail from Bloomberg considering how hard the push-back has been. Either a retraction in full or part or at least some company official acknowledgement of the questionable aspects would seem appropriate if some more verifiable information isn't forthcoming. Intentional lying on the part of the publication, Apple, or Amazon is very unlikely IMHO so someplace in there is a better explanation of what's going on.

    EDIT; Gruber isn't as quite as convinced by Apple's denials as they were written by Public Relations and not attributed to any specific executive making the claims.  Amazon on the other hand was written by a company executive, Steve Schmidt Chief Information Security Officer. He's accountable. I expect much more to come.

    EDIT2: The Senate Intelligence committee may also be looking into this.  Two different members have made that suggestion. 
    edited October 2018 cornchip
  • Reply 97 of 118
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,622member
    Wherever the truth in all this lies, (no pun or word game intended), it is a jolly good story, from the outside.

    I agree with many of the comments - but from both sides. 

    If Bloomberg was holding something back to use as a scatterbomb later on, that moment could be very soon, given the relatively detailed denials from many of the named parties. If they have nothing more to support their story, this will fizzle out and there will questions raised over the quality of the investigation.

    Any developed nation with sufficient knowledge and resources could try to infiltrate supply chains, transport (physical or digital) and even the designs themselves. We already know this. China, Russia, USA, Israel etc. Any one of them or others could have some fingers in the pie.

    It's cat and mouse just like it always has been.
  • Reply 98 of 118
    GeorgeBMacGeorgeBMac Posts: 11,421member
    gatorguy said:
    The Bloomberg story seems politically motivated...

    There isn’t enough information do determine fault in the separate firmware incident.  It also doesn’t say if Apple resumed using SuperMicro as a supplier...

    Bottom line is Apple found a problem and addressed it before it could cause damage.  We don’t know the results of their investigation into whom was responsible.  Was the firmware modified by a third party?  Was it a beta firmware? Was the hardware intercepted and modified after leaving the manufacturer, but before getting to Apple and an exploit introduced?

    No enough information... but Bloomberg needs to get their facts straight before publishing rumors.
    Bloomberg says they DO have their facts straight.
    "The companies’ denials are countered by six current and former senior national security officials, who—in conversations that began during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration—detailed the discovery of the chips and the government’s investigation. One of those officials and two people inside AWS provided extensive information on how the attack played out at Elemental and Amazon; the official and one of the insiders also described Amazon’s cooperation with the government investigation. In addition to the three Apple insiders, four of the six U.S. officials confirmed that Apple was a victim. In all, 17 people confirmed the manipulation of Supermicro’s hardware and other elements of the attacks. The sources were granted anonymity because of the sensitive, and in some cases classified, nature of the information."

    He said, she said...
    ....

    I am quite satisfied -- as both a consumer and a shareholder -- with Apple's unambiguous denial of this claim. I'd take Apple's word over that of these media/Washington DC types.
    I forget if it was Orwell or Trump who said:  "Don't believe anything you see.  Don't believe anything you hear".   Look!    It's 1984 35 years later.
    cornchip
  • Reply 99 of 118
    GeorgeBMacGeorgeBMac Posts: 11,421member
    Regardless of the "He said/She said" nature of this and regardless of who's right or who's wrong:

    The Bloomberg article is worth reading just for how it offers a peek into the murky, cloudy world of high end cyber security and the multiple and largely disconnected public and private defenses against it as well as how they interact.

    Fascinating!
    cornchip
  • Reply 100 of 118
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    Rayz2016 said:
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    The Bloomberg story seems politically motivated...

    There isn’t enough information do determine fault in the separate firmware incident.  It also doesn’t say if Apple resumed using SuperMicro as a supplier...

    Bottom line is Apple found a problem and addressed it before it could cause damage.  We don’t know the results of their investigation into whom was responsible.  Was the firmware modified by a third party?  Was it a beta firmware? Was the hardware intercepted and modified after leaving the manufacturer, but before getting to Apple and an exploit introduced?

    No enough information... but Bloomberg needs to get their facts straight before publishing rumors.
    Bloomberg says they DO have their facts straight.
    "The companies’ denials are countered by six current and former senior national security officials, who—in conversations that began during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration—detailed the discovery of the chips and the government’s investigation. One of those officials and two people inside AWS provided extensive information on how the attack played out at Elemental and Amazon; the official and one of the insiders also described Amazon’s cooperation with the government investigation. In addition to the three Apple insiders, four of the six U.S. officials confirmed that Apple was a victim. In all, 17 people confirmed the manipulation of Supermicro’s hardware and other elements of the attacks. The sources were granted anonymity because of the sensitive, and in some cases classified, nature of the information."

    He said, she said...
    He said, she said...  but where is there even one of these servers that can be shown with the rumored chip, and more germaine, let’s see one that was ever in Apple’s server farms.  
    No one claimed there was one installed at an Apple server farm AFAIK. If anything it was in an Apple lab, and even that is still a very open question. The claims regarding Amazon are more involved, yet Amazon too categorically denies there's any truth whatsoever to anything Bloomberg reported, it wa all made up.  All very very weird. 
    I set a bit of a trap for you and you fell into it.  I knew you’d answer the second part of my question without making any comment in the bigger question; if Bloomberg has 17 sources (which seems a big deal to you) and if there were thousands of these affected severs, then why aren’t you also curious about not a single server having surfaced for inspection by the story’s reporters?  

    Whole lot of smoke, no smoking gun. 
    A trap? For what reason? You really wanted me back? Odd...
    Because people are getting tired of the usual Apple FUD pellet droppers, and their predictable narratives. Like yours.

    That's the thing about GoogleGuy: his reason for living seems to be to undermine Apple and sell Google at every opportunity, while trying to present a rather unconvincing persona as a concerned, but ultimately impartial observer.

    Still, in cases like these, where we have denials from both Amazon and Apple, and no tangible evidence from Bloomberg, you have to wonder why he is so desperate to keep this rumour alive, especially since he said he was going to drop out of the thread on Page 2. Does he really believe it has legs, or is he merely attempting to divert attention from somewhere else?

    I ask because Google's Dragonfly project has been causing quiet ructions around the internet for quite some time, leading to some rather noisy recent departures from the company.

    And now, in the last day or so, the rumbles are becoming a little bit loud because Mike Pence has now decided it's something he should be talking about.

    https://www.cnet.com/news/google-should-end-development-of-dragonfly-search-engine-for-china-says-pence/
    https://www.techtimes.com/articles/234346/20180916/google-employees-resign-in-protest-of-project-dragonfly-a-censored-search-engine-for-china.htm
    https://theintercept.com/2018/09/14/google-china-prototype-links-searches-to-phone-numbers/


    One of Google Guy's favourite sticks he likes to beat Apple with is the handover of its iCloud operations to a Chinese company (we shall ignore small details such as it being a requirement by Chinese law, and that Apple has claimed it still retains control of the keys), because Google, being such a champion of truth and justice, has steered clear of China (let's ignore small details such as China's homegrown search engine was handing them their heads and that the Chinese government thinks the only body that should be allowed to harvest data is the Chinese government).

    But now it appears that Google is heading back into China with a specialised search engine that will allow the Chinese Authority to track its users. Is this true?

    The employees resigning in numbers seem to think so.
    Various IT journals seem to think so too.
    And Google hasn't denied it.

    I wonder if GoogleGuy would be happy to accept this as a given, without any names or credible evidence backing it up or a straight out denial from the Mothership? I mean, he seems happy to accept Bloomberg's word under even less compelling evidence.
    As you said Google isn't denying it so not sure what your question is. It's hardly a given since the choice is not solely with them anyway. Whether they do or don't isn't finalized obviously so we can argue about that later if it happens. Actually probably not so much argue as agree since I don't think chasing  "mo' money" in return for your company soul is worth it, and you have "other reasons" for nailing google with it IF it happens.

    IMHO all the big techs have more than they can possibly use already, Google included, and the rich haven't historically been good to the rest of us. 
    muthuk_vanalingamronn
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