Supermicro Says They Found No Spy Chips in Their Motherboards

[mt2e]

Some of us have Super Micro boards and none of us know what we're talking about. Actual technical people know this is possible. You can transgress an air gap'd system but people don't believe you can install a backdoor chip, its bananas. The people describing schemes that explain how this couldn't happen obviously don't have the technical skill to know how it DID happen.


The FBI won't even let Snopes post about it.

 

[Glock24]

The whole story about the spy chip is ridiculous. It would require a R&D tremendous effort and there's no way you can install a spy device capable of reading and storing network traffic and RAM contents and then capable of transmitting that, in such a size that's not detectable to the naked eye. It's way more simple and cheaper (and sane) to exploit some security hole in the BMC/IPMI via software, or replace the whole firmware with a malicious one. Even so, the network traffic should be big enough to be detectable.

So I call this a conspiracyconspiracy theory BS.

 

[defaultluser]

Not a counter-argument, I dont see what they have to gain? This isn't some mom and pop blog, this is bloomberg.

They don't have to prove every story they print. There's a long history of press getting away with bullshit stories because they did their "due diligence" and really believed the story to be true at the time. That's all you have to do to make most libel lawsuits slide off you.

Bloomberg has a growing history of reporting pure speculation. Sometimes they're right, but most of the time they're not. No retraction or story update required, because they were "following the rules to the bare minimum."

It's a way to get click-bait to their site, and have them sign-up for more magazine subscriptions. Bloomberg Businessweek has been losing 20-30 million annually for years now, so the entire site's credibility is ready to be sacrificed to increase readership.

If they handle this with just the right hands-on, they can steer the bad PR blow-back from this to minimally affect their paying subscribers. You know, like stating that they are having "another" reporter verify the story. I'm sure that reporter is totally independent

 

[Vader1975]

i still don't think they willingly went out of their way to release the story knowing it was fake, i think the writer was legitimately misled buy some one that sounded believable. shit happens and the world moves on..

I absolutely agree. I also still wonder if there wasn't something that actually did happen.

 

[Coleman]

I really don't think it's true but on the other hand if you think when the story came out and all share price damage was done - why did no one sue? Something doesn't smell right

 

[Uvaman2]

I thought more would see it, but to me its obvious the secret chip story is a plant.. propaganda to discredit Chinese producers... It just backfired in destroying American companies as opposed to just FUD production in China.
Look, unless the US government is actively protecting Chinese electronics, there is no way Chinese produced electronics are riddled with spy chips or some sort... I think if they were, we would be doing way more than what we are, way , way more... Right now all we are doing is trying to screw them over from modernizing more and getting more technologically independent, I think if their devices were truly that dangerous, we would do much more,... I mean I hope we would since we should really.

 

[theBrownLlama]

As if they will admit to any hint of chips or attempt to get chips on their boards

and thus Supermicro should sue Bloomberg instead. Popcorn for everyone, and some one might panic enough to fly to UK and hand over court-sealed documents to the sergeant-at-arms.

 

[theBrownLlama]

I thought more would see it, but to me its obvious the secret chip story is a plant.. propaganda to discredit Chinese producers... It just backfired in destroying American companies as opposed to just FUD production in China.
Look, unless the US government is actively protecting Chinese electronics, there is no way Chinese produced electronics are riddled with spy chips or some sort... I think if they were, we would be doing way more than what we are, way , way more... Right now all we are doing is trying to screw them over from modernizing more and getting more technologically independent, I think if their devices were truly that dangerous, we would do much more,... I mean I hope we would since we should really.

that is what we are starting to do now, unlike when under Obama. (malware in Chinese products, hacks of military contractors occurred often under his term etc)