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gbin 8y ago
What bothers me is that we have no proof and everything is vague. The motherboard needs to account for the chip at the PCB traces level to work right? Did anybody saw a weird 6 traces converging at a point for no reason on all the motherboards on the market? What is the exact model? Which bus it is fed from? Give me the name of the bus instead of vague journalistic stuff! Send pictures, output captures, anything.
- bonestamp2 8y ago
  > Did anybody saw a weird 6 traces converging at a point for no reason on all the motherboards on the market? You do ask some good questions, but if apple can dropship my one macbook pro from China when I order it, I suspect they could dropship 1 (or many) of these boards to Apple, Amazon, etc when ordered. In other words, they wouldn't have to produce all of them with this special chip. Hell, they might only need to send one to each customer to infiltrate their network. If Apple ordered thousands of these, I doubt they would xray each one (assuming they're multi-layered boards).
  - coliveira 8y ago
    You seem to forget how difficult it is to manufacture a single unit of a mother board to achieve the effect you're imagining. Do you really think they have a production line where every week or so they create a different mother board adding this circuit? Why in the world would they create these additional costs, and is it even economically justifiable? This whole story seems each day worse, just like believing in Big Foot.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      The whole point of inserting malicious hardware for shadowy intelligence-related reasons is that you do it either out of government coercion or via government funding. I don't know why it's so implausible that Chinese intelligence is using the Chinese tech industry to carry out their operations when American intelligence uses the American tech industry to carry out their operations. Nobody said PRISM was fake news because why would Apple and Google and Facebook invest in it; the actual investment came from NSA and the cooperation of these companies is via top secret FISA warrants. China doesn't even need to maintain the pretense of legality that the NSA does. Again, I don't think the Bloomberg story by itself is credible anymore, but I also don't think it's as implausible as you are making it sound.
    - moftz 8y ago
      If the board house has copies of the gerbers, which they should, someone could easily edit those to introduce a spot for the implant. And if they already have all of the drawings, they can just add those empty pads into the design so any inspection wouldn't raise alarm. Then install the actual implant post-inspection. Maybe they get lucky by just re-purposing unused pads from the original design and route the traces to where ever.
    - bonestamp2 8y ago
      > Do you really think they have a production line where every week or so they create a different mother board adding this circuit? No, I do not think that. I assume they hand modify a few boards at a time, just like the NSA. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... Modifying every single board would violate one of the tenants of spying... it would make it much more likely for the implant to be detected.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  The device in the photographs is essentially a fancy multi-layer ceramic cap. It can't contain a silicon die without a manufactured cavity and a lid. There is no way to do that in such a small package.
bredren 8y ago
Are you suggesting both apple and amazon are covering up the truth?
- simonh 8y ago
  Not just covering up the truth. Doing so knowing that getting caught would open them up to a huge public backlash and possibly legal culpability, even though if Bloomberg is correct about 30 companies are affected, the government knows all abou it, and dozens of Apple, AWS and other insiders and experts are actively talking to Bloomberg and sharing details left right and centre already. How does anybody think Apple and AWS would calculate they could get away with lying like this, when Bloomberg says it’s already widely known and widely being leaked? So where are all these insiders that are blabbing? How come they’re not talking to any other journalists? What about the security experts Bloomberg says are also in on it and willing to talk? If Bloomberg is right, this story should be wide open by now. Instead ....nothing. Not a single scrap of corroborating evidence for this supposedly widely known and broadly leaked issue.
jackconnor 8y ago
If that's the only question then the answer for every major company is "guilty". I don't think doing business in china means that Bloomberg gets to make up a bunch of BS from mysterious anonymous sources without a single piece of physical evidence, wiping out billions in market value, and just call it a day and we're all supposed to believe it because they use the word "China". I think we can probably hold them, and ourselves, to a higher standard of journalism. Though, clearly there is a huge market for China-hating technopanic, no matter how little evidence or credibility there may be, since some people will literally believe anything if they think it's done in China.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  It isn't really plausible that Bloomberg made up the story. They had to have a high degree of confidence to publish it. The question we all need to be asking is why they had that high degree of confidence. Where their information came from and whether or not those sources had ulterior motives to lead Bloomberg astray. I have to imagine Bloomberg is also trying to find out why their story has not matched statements by the companies alleged to be involved so starkly. There is a story here, but what that story actually is is definitely in question.
  - jackconnor 8y ago
    I totally agree, I think they cobbled together bits and pieces and kind of put it together based on what they could find. The one guy they interviewed who is willing to talk said explicitly that this is what happened to him: https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/09/bloomberg/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/09/bloomberg/
  - philwelch 8y ago
    Yeah, my hunch (like yours) is that everyone involved--Bloomberg, Apple, AWS--believes, in good faith, in what they have stated, and have collected more than enough evidence to back those statements. Since there's a contradiction, the truth is probably fairly weird, if it's enough to provide so much conflicting evidence both ways. The least weird conclusion is that Bloomberg connected too many dots the wrong way around and are embarrassed to admit it.
pvg 8y ago
This seemingly trenchant observation ignores how much AWS (and Apple) have to lose in all their markets if it turns out they are insistently, loudly, publicly lying to everyone, including their shareholders and congress.
markrages 8y ago
Hardware hacks have physical evidence. Where is the evidence for this story?

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gbin 8y ago

What bothers me is that we have no proof and everything is vague. The motherboard needs to account for the chip at the PCB traces level to work right? Did anybody saw a weird 6 traces converging at a point for no reason on all the motherboards on the market? What is the exact model? Which bus it is fed from? Give me the name of the bus instead of vague journalistic stuff! Send pictures, output captures, anything.

bonestamp2 8y ago
> Did anybody saw a weird 6 traces converging at a point for no reason on all the motherboards on the market? You do ask some good questions, but if apple can dropship my one macbook pro from China when I order it, I suspect they could dropship 1 (or many) of these boards to Apple, Amazon, etc when ordered. In other words, they wouldn't have to produce all of them with this special chip. Hell, they might only need to send one to each customer to infiltrate their network. If Apple ordered thousands of these, I doubt they would xray each one (assuming they're multi-layered boards).
- coliveira 8y ago
  You seem to forget how difficult it is to manufacture a single unit of a mother board to achieve the effect you're imagining. Do you really think they have a production line where every week or so they create a different mother board adding this circuit? Why in the world would they create these additional costs, and is it even economically justifiable? This whole story seems each day worse, just like believing in Big Foot.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    The whole point of inserting malicious hardware for shadowy intelligence-related reasons is that you do it either out of government coercion or via government funding. I don't know why it's so implausible that Chinese intelligence is using the Chinese tech industry to carry out their operations when American intelligence uses the American tech industry to carry out their operations. Nobody said PRISM was fake news because why would Apple and Google and Facebook invest in it; the actual investment came from NSA and the cooperation of these companies is via top secret FISA warrants. China doesn't even need to maintain the pretense of legality that the NSA does. Again, I don't think the Bloomberg story by itself is credible anymore, but I also don't think it's as implausible as you are making it sound.
  - moftz 8y ago
    If the board house has copies of the gerbers, which they should, someone could easily edit those to introduce a spot for the implant. And if they already have all of the drawings, they can just add those empty pads into the design so any inspection wouldn't raise alarm. Then install the actual implant post-inspection. Maybe they get lucky by just re-purposing unused pads from the original design and route the traces to where ever.
  - bonestamp2 8y ago
    > Do you really think they have a production line where every week or so they create a different mother board adding this circuit? No, I do not think that. I assume they hand modify a few boards at a time, just like the NSA. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... Modifying every single board would violate one of the tenants of spying... it would make it much more likely for the implant to be detected.
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
The device in the photographs is essentially a fancy multi-layer ceramic cap. It can't contain a silicon die without a manufactured cavity and a lid. There is no way to do that in such a small package.

bredren 8y ago

Are you suggesting both apple and amazon are covering up the truth?

simonh 8y ago
Not just covering up the truth. Doing so knowing that getting caught would open them up to a huge public backlash and possibly legal culpability, even though if Bloomberg is correct about 30 companies are affected, the government knows all abou it, and dozens of Apple, AWS and other insiders and experts are actively talking to Bloomberg and sharing details left right and centre already. How does anybody think Apple and AWS would calculate they could get away with lying like this, when Bloomberg says it’s already widely known and widely being leaked? So where are all these insiders that are blabbing? How come they’re not talking to any other journalists? What about the security experts Bloomberg says are also in on it and willing to talk? If Bloomberg is right, this story should be wide open by now. Instead ....nothing. Not a single scrap of corroborating evidence for this supposedly widely known and broadly leaked issue.

jackconnor 8y ago

If that's the only question then the answer for every major company is "guilty". I don't think doing business in china means that Bloomberg gets to make up a bunch of BS from mysterious anonymous sources without a single piece of physical evidence, wiping out billions in market value, and just call it a day and we're all supposed to believe it because they use the word "China". I think we can probably hold them, and ourselves, to a higher standard of journalism. Though, clearly there is a huge market for China-hating technopanic, no matter how little evidence or credibility there may be, since some people will literally believe anything if they think it's done in China.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
It isn't really plausible that Bloomberg made up the story. They had to have a high degree of confidence to publish it. The question we all need to be asking is why they had that high degree of confidence. Where their information came from and whether or not those sources had ulterior motives to lead Bloomberg astray. I have to imagine Bloomberg is also trying to find out why their story has not matched statements by the companies alleged to be involved so starkly. There is a story here, but what that story actually is is definitely in question.
- jackconnor 8y ago
  I totally agree, I think they cobbled together bits and pieces and kind of put it together based on what they could find. The one guy they interviewed who is willing to talk said explicitly that this is what happened to him: https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/09/bloomberg/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/09/bloomberg/
- philwelch 8y ago
  Yeah, my hunch (like yours) is that everyone involved--Bloomberg, Apple, AWS--believes, in good faith, in what they have stated, and have collected more than enough evidence to back those statements. Since there's a contradiction, the truth is probably fairly weird, if it's enough to provide so much conflicting evidence both ways. The least weird conclusion is that Bloomberg connected too many dots the wrong way around and are embarrassed to admit it.

pvg 8y ago

This seemingly trenchant observation ignores how much AWS (and Apple) have to lose in all their markets if it turns out they are insistently, loudly, publicly lying to everyone, including their shareholders and congress.

markrages 8y ago

Hardware hacks have physical evidence. Where is the evidence for this story?