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The reason I'm skeptical of the story is that the people inspecting hardware at Apple are at least as smart as I am. If I would do a certain thing to inspect ha

The reason I'm skeptical of the story is that the people inspecting hardware at Apple are at least as smart as I am. If I would do a certain thing to inspect hardware and firmware, then that means Apple would do at least that thing. Those are brilliant hardware guys. I'm having a hard time seeing how you sneak something by them. I think maybe in the firmware? (But probably not. They've also got the most brilliant firmware security guys on the planet.) And on the off chance that this thing did slip by, a picture was provided of the purported part. It would have been a simple matter to go back through all of your audits looking for that part. Because if I'm smart enough to catalog and record my hardware audits, that means that Apple was doing so a looong time before I was. I don't know man? I'm getting more and more skeptical of this story by the day.

sandworm101 8y ago
>> I'm having a hard time seeing how you sneak something by them. Apple orders in bulk. They aren't x-raying every server bound for their latest datacenter. I've worked with companies that do examine for every tiny imperfection. It costs thousands per-server and means significant and often random delays (defense industry). If apple, a publicly-traded company, were so rigorous they wouldn't be able to hide the costs. So we know they aren't. I'm sure that apple does inspect systems that it deems vital to its internal systems, but servers meant for customer use are too numerous.
jvzr 8y ago
That chip picture is apparently a 'coupler' example photograph provided by Fitzpatrick, the security consultant. In the podcast mentioned below, he apparently was very astonished to find it as it means Bloomberg never saw the chip itself
rdlecler1 8y ago
I’d assume it’s a sampling problem. Do they fully inspect every board? If they ship three modified boards for an entire data warehouse could that be sufficient?

sandworm101 8y ago

>> I'm having a hard time seeing how you sneak something by them. Apple orders in bulk. They aren't x-raying every server bound for their latest datacenter. I've worked with companies that do examine for every tiny imperfection. It costs thousands per-server and means significant and often random delays (defense industry). If apple, a publicly-traded company, were so rigorous they wouldn't be able to hide the costs. So we know they aren't. I'm sure that apple does inspect systems that it deems vital to its internal systems, but servers meant for customer use are too numerous.

jvzr 8y ago

That chip picture is apparently a 'coupler' example photograph provided by Fitzpatrick, the security consultant. In the podcast mentioned below, he apparently was very astonished to find it as it means Bloomberg never saw the chip itself

rdlecler1 8y ago

I’d assume it’s a sampling problem. Do they fully inspect every board? If they ship three modified boards for an entire data warehouse could that be sufficient?