China Embedded Spy Chips On Supermicro Motherboards

There seems to be too much speculation in their article though.
Zarathustra[H] said:
You are right, that particular clip is from a show, and thus not a very reliable source of information.

A better source would be the Democracy Index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit based on definitions of freedom as defined by organizations such as Freedom House.

58, as suggested in that TV show clip is an exaggeration, but we as a nation have fallen significantly from our once leading position during the revolution.

2017 was the first year the U.S. was not in the top segment of "Full Democracies", but instead dropped into the category of "Flawed Democracies". The U.S. is currently tied in 21st place with Italy.


Now, I know, some of you right now are already foaming at the mouth ready to yell "But the U.S. is not a democracy it is a Constitutional (or Democratic) Republic! Let me cut you off at the pass right here. This is a load of semantic bullshit.

Yes, our founding fathers devised controls in our political system to prevent the so called "tyranny by the majority", but so has just about every other democracy on the planet. Democracy doesn't mean "rule by simple majority", it just means that a people govern themselves through some form of elections, and as such our system, the Constitutional Republic is a form of Democracy, not different from democracy, just like how a Labrador is a breed of Dog, or a Ford is a brand of Car.


Only someone who has never spent time abroad could ever believe the joke that America is the "land of the free". We certainly were in the late 18th century. We have a great constitution and our nation was founded on great ideals and principles, but have failed in execution since, giving way to partisan bickering, gerrymandering, lobbying, voter disenfranchisement and many other problems that don't exist to the same extent in some better functioning democracies.

In the end, we are one of approximately 76 free democracies on earth, 20 of which are doing better than we are.

Time to shape up! Sticking our fingers in our ears and ignoring our problems isn't going to help us. The first step to fixing a problem is to acknowledging that you have it, thus all true patriots should be recognizing that we do have a problem and trying to come up with solutions, not falling over ourselves in false patriotism by yelling about how free we are, and wearing flag pins.
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This is an amazing post. We the voters need to have a strong look and dig deep. People are so split amont this 2 party system it really drives me nuts! Its nuts! I mean I really need someone to run as independent that can pull republicans and democrats, That would be the greatest day in our democracy lol. I am sick and tired of people fighting, treating their presidents like they are GODs that can't make mistakes and are perfect. The game is so rigged these days its not funny and people are all gaslighted by their parties. I don't mind voting either republican or democrat but I wish there was more major parties in our country.

I think we are too politically charged to be free to be honest, if that makes sense. We fight over our politicians and among party lines, until we unshackle ourselves and open up our mind that we need to vote from our brain and heart and not by the political juice we get fed by politcians and divisions we are better off. if I could ban politics from my life I honestly would lol!
 
mikeo said:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/johnpaczkowski/apple-china-hacking-bloomberg-servers-spies-fbi
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I think this issue is more damaging (if true) than the earlier granular denial. If Bloomberg is wrong, then it was a concerted effort by people in the government and at these companies to get them to put out an inaccurate story. That seems very unlikely. It'd be one thing if this was coming from Daily Caller or Daily KOS, but 1 year investigations by solid news organizations are rarely wrong. And it's not like Bloomberg is some anti-china publication.

But we'll see. I'm sure that Wapo, NYT or WSJ already have people looking to confirm this story.
 
nilepez said:
I think this issue is more damaging (if true) than the earlier granular denial. If Bloomberg is wrong, then it was a concerted effort by people in the government and at these companies to get them to put out an inaccurate story. That seems very unlikely. It'd be one thing if this was coming from Daily Caller or Daily KOS, but 1 year investigations by solid news organizations are rarely wrong. And it's not like Bloomberg is some anti-china publication.

But we'll see. I'm sure that Wapo, NYT or WSJ already have people looking to confirm this story.
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Honestly its not far fetched. Trump is on a trade war with china. A story like this only strenghten his postions and gives him public support as they hate china even more. Its not hard for me to believe that government officials fooled bloomberg lol.

Bloomberg doesn't exactly mention any names or sources. Its just our sources. I can make up a story saying they have sources. I would generally give benefit of the doubt to bloomberg but they aren't really proving their case very hard.
 
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EVIL-SCOTSMAN said:
Shit gets deeper.

The UK’s entire internet infrastructure is based on devices from Huawei.

Huawei was started and owned by a highup chinese intelligence officer. Yup I know the UK are fucking dumb for using them, but they did and now huawei is stealing all our data’s, especially if everyone of their devices incorporate a 1mm big chip that nobody can see.

Fuckin cunts they are. I have a great idea, why don’t we start adding huge tarrifs to chinese imports, that will fuck them up.
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Has anything with Huawei actually been proven?
 
Meeho said:
Has anything with Huawei actually been proven?
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Nothing much really. I think every thing is politically driven. I wonder if china does the same lol. I am sure we do our best to spy on them too.
 
nilepez said:
I'm sure that Wapo, NYT or WSJ already have people looking to confirm this story.
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There's a good chance they looked into it long before Bloomberg published. Stories like this are shopped around to reporters. They aren't ferreted out by reporters.
 
Sooo... I skimmed through these pages.

All I can really do is feel skeptical.

- They specifically mention "third party" that found it. Which third party? Do they simply not want to be named? Smells conspiracy-like, like someone wanted this to come across a certain way in order to influence people in a certain direction. The wording just plays out that way. I just have to home in on that wording usage for some reason. Just intuition.

- Making PCB-level changes and putting in chips that work like this is... actually pretty hard. I mean they have to know things down to a pretty low level, like where the VIAs are at and whatnot, and where exactly they can tap in. Ideally they would have VLSI schematics. This is really hard to due with just casual "we infiltrated the center and lolsoldered it on" type of access, IMO...

There's a lot of cooperation happening behind the scenes here, and it's hard to figure out what exactly they want to do.

- Quick corporate scandal to crash a competitor?
- China just wants to buy out Supermicro?
- The US just wants to influence public opinion on China? (or maybe more?)
- Something else?

I mean it really could be as simple as them figuring out the schematic and wanting to spy on us, though. Who the heck knows...

mikeo said:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/securi...on-bloomberg-businessweeks-erroneous-article/
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Unfortunately that entire thing just reads as an attempt by Amazon to say that they've never done any fouls...



Well, business in America like usual I suppose. A bunch of large parties operating in the background, leaving the populace to bicker about insignificant facts while they miss the big picture until it's too late, getting casually steered. Not that it's their fault. Not much we can do here... as individuals.
 
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Meeho said:
Has anything with Huawei actually been proven?
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Not as far as I’m aware, but their shit is everywhere in the uk phone/internet network, and their has been multiple huge hacks, nhs, parliament, etc etc,

whether huawei had anything to do with it is unknown, but it could be known by intelligence folk and may be kept a secret until all their shit is pulled,

Given chinas love of hacking, it was stupid to allow a company run by a high up chinese intelligence officer to plant their hardware all over the uk. Some european countries straight up told huawei to fuckoff.
 
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serpretetsky said:
VLSI schematics? Do you mean PCB schematics and layouts?
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Probably. I'm freaking tired, and I probably mixed up some terms from my college days (since my degree did not go with what I ended up getting employed doing, that was a very long time ago). I know I took some VLSI class where we put the VIAs, sinks, gates, etc into a program and then it had this pain in the butt layout check to make sure everything was spaced properly, and etc etc. I guess that might actually be for designing the inside of those little black chips though now that I think about it. Probably not the actual PCB.
 
ghostwich said:
Reverse justification for tariffs, why not.
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Yep, This is what I think too. All internal sources and no one named. All speculation. I mean no one has to prove anything since no one will admit anything. I am no China lover but this seems like well timed reporting and may be bloomberg got fed bullshit now they have to stick to it.
 
NKD said:
Honestly its not far fetched. Trump is on a trade war with china. A story like this only strenghten his postions and gives him public support as they hate china even more. Its not hard for me to believe that government officials fooled bloomberg lol.

Bloomberg doesn't exactly mention any names or sources. Its just our sources. I can make up a story saying they have sources. I would generally give benefit of the doubt to bloomberg but they aren't really proving their case very hard.
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It could be, but it's unlikely (especially given the new story where the Government denies the entire thing. Also, Trump hasn't really been nearly as strong on their stealing IP (an issue I care about) as he is on trade deficits. But we'll see how this plays out. Seems hard to believe that they had sources in agencies and at the companies all lying.
 
EVIL-SCOTSMAN said:
Not as far as I’m aware, but their shit is everywhere in the uk phone/internet network, and their has been multiple huge hacks, nhs, parliament, etc etc,

whether huawei had anything to do with it is unknown, but it could be known by intelligence folk and may be kept a secret until all their shit is pulled,

Given chinas love of hacking, it was stupid to allow a company run by a high up chinese intelligence officer to plant their hardware all over the uk. Some european countries straight up told huawei to fuckoff.
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We use to use their SMS hardware, but we replaced it years ago with another vender (airwide?) and I can't remember who we're using now. I was always very skeptical of using China's s/w and h/w as part of our backend. I wouldn't use their phones either, but if you're a nobody looking to save a buck, then it's probably not a big deal.
 
Saw the story the other day and until I see this corroborated by one or more independent security researchers its no more than FUD. Has anyone seen this independently confirmed? Most of the sources I usually go to haven't been able to.
 
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