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It goes beyond that. If this story were in fact true, what we're witnessing is large companies whose entire business is built upon user trust setting fire to th

It goes beyond that. If this story were in fact true, what we're witnessing is large companies whose entire business is built upon user trust setting fire to themselves. Who'd ever trust AWS again with anything of consequence if it turns out the denial is false? I don't buy it as written. There's something else here.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
addicted 8y ago
What would lead to more of a loss of trust? Revealing to your customers that you hid a massive hack for a few years (even if the government required you to) or insisting that Bloomberg is lying, when you know all the other relevant players will also insist on the same.
ethbro 8y ago
How would one falsify a denial?
- lacker 8y ago
  The article claims there is an email trail about this. Those communications could be leaked - that would make it pretty obvious this story is true, if it is. There could also be simply a picture of the spy chip! It's pretty easy to have stronger evidence than this article has.
  - ethbro 8y ago
    Both of those are in control of the companies in question. I think many comments have gotten far too conspiracy theoryish, but I can't think of any plausible answers to "If they were lying, how would we know?"
Jach 8y ago
> Who'd ever trust AWS again with anything of consequence if it turns out the denial is false? I agree it makes little sense to attack and deny rather than just stay quiet or keep it to a minimal PR blurb. But I think you're overestimating the amount of blowback they would get if they're lying. Most people just wouldn't care. It might be the decisive factor in a bigger company deciding where to put something new and them going to Oracle Metal or something, but I am really skeptical their bottom line would suffer because of this one thing.
- 394549 8y ago
  Also, almost everyone who lies thinks they'll get away with it. Otherwise, why lie? Maybe AWS and Apple are counting on the top-secret nature of all this to enable their lies. Would US intelligence agencies really come out on the record to contradict the denials and confirm the hack if it meant destroying the credibility of a couple of American companies? The Bloomberg article detailed how the government was not willing to sound the same alarms against an American company as they were against Huawei and ZTE for just that reason. I'm guessing that creates enough ambiguity for false denials to be effective.
  - morpheuskafka 8y ago
    Yeah I think people don’t understand how big of a deal this would be. Remember Joseph McCarthy? Now picture that, in today’s politics, only with even a shred of real evidence that US companies and the military were infiltrated. That’s an act of war between two nuclear powers. There is literally no telling what kind of chaos could follow. I’m not saying it’s guranteed that this story is good—-for one, I find the glossed over technical details a little questionable. But it is definitely plausible that this is a false denial, under orders or not. Regardless, two points are very clear. Remember Stallman who uses that old X60 with a free BIOS? We all called him crazy when he insisted on not having management firmwares and secretive back doors. Now we have a story claiming they were used in an attack by a US adversary (as well as a long chain of confirmed recent security flaws). The second point is that we have to stop trusting China as the sole source for all electronics. It’s a national security crisis that there isn’t a single US facility making many of the components needed for basic computing platform. The federal government needs to immediately and strongly incentive more domestic foundries. And not the trump style “here be factory, jobs good” but actual targeted planning to bring the whole supply chain back, not just the final assembly everyone talks about.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

addicted 8y ago

What would lead to more of a loss of trust? Revealing to your customers that you hid a massive hack for a few years (even if the government required you to) or insisting that Bloomberg is lying, when you know all the other relevant players will also insist on the same.

ethbro 8y ago

How would one falsify a denial?

lacker 8y ago
The article claims there is an email trail about this. Those communications could be leaked - that would make it pretty obvious this story is true, if it is. There could also be simply a picture of the spy chip! It's pretty easy to have stronger evidence than this article has.
- ethbro 8y ago
  Both of those are in control of the companies in question. I think many comments have gotten far too conspiracy theoryish, but I can't think of any plausible answers to "If they were lying, how would we know?"

Jach 8y ago

> Who'd ever trust AWS again with anything of consequence if it turns out the denial is false? I agree it makes little sense to attack and deny rather than just stay quiet or keep it to a minimal PR blurb. But I think you're overestimating the amount of blowback they would get if they're lying. Most people just wouldn't care. It might be the decisive factor in a bigger company deciding where to put something new and them going to Oracle Metal or something, but I am really skeptical their bottom line would suffer because of this one thing.

394549 8y ago
Also, almost everyone who lies thinks they'll get away with it. Otherwise, why lie? Maybe AWS and Apple are counting on the top-secret nature of all this to enable their lies. Would US intelligence agencies really come out on the record to contradict the denials and confirm the hack if it meant destroying the credibility of a couple of American companies? The Bloomberg article detailed how the government was not willing to sound the same alarms against an American company as they were against Huawei and ZTE for just that reason. I'm guessing that creates enough ambiguity for false denials to be effective.
- morpheuskafka 8y ago
  Yeah I think people don’t understand how big of a deal this would be. Remember Joseph McCarthy? Now picture that, in today’s politics, only with even a shred of real evidence that US companies and the military were infiltrated. That’s an act of war between two nuclear powers. There is literally no telling what kind of chaos could follow. I’m not saying it’s guranteed that this story is good—-for one, I find the glossed over technical details a little questionable. But it is definitely plausible that this is a false denial, under orders or not. Regardless, two points are very clear. Remember Stallman who uses that old X60 with a free BIOS? We all called him crazy when he insisted on not having management firmwares and secretive back doors. Now we have a story claiming they were used in an attack by a US adversary (as well as a long chain of confirmed recent security flaws). The second point is that we have to stop trusting China as the sole source for all electronics. It’s a national security crisis that there isn’t a single US facility making many of the components needed for basic computing platform. The federal government needs to immediately and strongly incentive more domestic foundries. And not the trump style “here be factory, jobs good” but actual targeted planning to bring the whole supply chain back, not just the final assembly everyone talks about.