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On the other hand, Newsweek was wrong about Satoshi. My suspicion is that there are many cases where the Chinese government is actually trying to insert backdo
by lacker 8y ago
On the other hand, Newsweek was wrong about Satoshi.
My suspicion is that there are many cases where the Chinese government is actually trying to insert backdoors into things, and that in particular Supermicro really has been compromised by the Chinese government, but the technical details of this chip are incorrect. That explains why so many government officials are eager to leak information to Bloomberg, but at the same time the technical details don't really make sense.
It isn't really in Amazon's and Apple's best interest to lie about this. When Gmail got hacked by the Chinese government, Google was pretty honest about it. China has a lot of resources so you can't really expect companies to fend off 100% of attacks on their own; it makes sense for them to acknowledge this publicly and get help from the US government when needed.
- Jach 8y agoAnd even when Google was hacked by the US government, they're pretty up front about it and about addressing the problems. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/googlers-say-f-you-to-nsa-company-encrypts-internal-network/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/googl...
- pm90 8y agoRemember that this was during a time when the US Government was not run by incompetent hacks who lie all the time. The current political environment does not foster an open discussion as it used to be under the previous administration.
- xvector 8y agoYou aren't talking to Trump in incidents like these. Day-to-day interactions with bureaucracy are unlikely to have changed much.
- pm90 8y agoDo you really believe that Trump hasn't infected the Federal bureaucracy? Federal Agencies are headed by political appointees and their assistants. Any reason to pummel the companies which have a (real or imagined) animus will be met with retribution. Just the other day he was falsely ranting about Google censoring Right-wing outlets
- makomk 8y agoNote that Facebook and Apple have confirmed that they had heard about and actually saw, respectively, security issues with compromised software updates from Supermicro - it's only the chip story they're denying. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-the-software-side-of-china-s-supply-chain-attack https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-04/the-big-h...
- smsm42 8y agoThere's a huge diff between "your web management software is buggy" (pretty much every web management software is kinda crappy and significant number probably would dissolve like wet paper under a serious security audit) and "your motherboard has extra chip which grants full hw level access to outside parties". The former is completely routine and happens nearly every time anybody bothers to do a security audit. The latter, if true, is one of the biggest stories of the decade.
- lern_too_spel 8y ago> When Gmail got hacked by the Chinese government, Google was pretty honest about it. That hack involved several companies, most of whom were not up front about it.
- pdeuchler 8y agoThe Newsweek that published that article and the Newsweek that built the brand reputation are entirely separate entities. The current Newsweek is no more formal journalism than Gawker is, which is to say occasionally they'll get big scoops but most of the time they're in the mud trying to get clicks/eyeballs.
- notatoad 8y agoNewsweek's credibility is a long, long ways off any of the other outlets being mentioned here.