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Man, I am now 90% convinced that someone intentionally misled Bloomberg. It looks like this may end up being an extremely embarrassing episode for them.

by fhood 8y ago

flamtap 8y ago
And potentially a group of people. Maybe I am giving Bloomberg too much credit at this point, but their article cites a number of sources -- albeit anonymous ones -- and I think it could very well be a coordinated effort from a group of interested parties.
- acqq 8y ago
  See what one of the sources says: https://risky.biz/RB517_feature/ https://risky.biz/RB517_feature/ He showed the “emails he sent to Bloomberg, prior to the story’s publication, that said the hardware back-dooring the article described “didn’t make sense”.” Another text about that source: https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/08/security-researcher-cited-in-bloombergs-china-spy-chip-investigation-casts-doubt-on-storys-veracity https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/08/security-r...
aero142 8y ago
It's all just speculation but this seems like the exact kind of story you would want in order to pass some legislation to prevent foreign manufactured chips being used by USG.
- lwansbrough 8y ago
  I'm all for globalism but that's one area where the best strategy is probably to keep production inside the borders. Not that I'd condone misleading the press to create a case for the legislation.
  - sneak 8y ago
    Yes, manufacture the high security chips on one of the many 7nm fabs in the US. I suppose it also follows that the fab and design should be staffed only as NOFORN? That rules out the lead on the Apple silicon team. I don’t think you understand how this works. This isn’t a nationalism vs globalism thing.
    - lwansbrough 8y ago
      You're the one that jumped from no foreign production to no "foreign" employees. Of course there's a difference between a factory operating under the supervision of the People's Liberation Army and an immigrant working in a lead role at a company. My comment is basically a pre-reaction to nationalists who would want to use this situation as an excuse to bring as much manufacturing work home as possible, even if it doesn't make sense (and if this were all a ruse, it would be a good way to get the White House on board.) Granted, it would also be pretty dumb to trust your adversary (from a national defence perspective) to build your weapons for you. Which is what the US is doing to a certain degree. Of course this is about globalism, because it's what lead to this situation in the first place. But nationalism, importantly, is not the solution. That's what I hope people take away from this.
      - sneak 8y ago
        Who is the adversary, though? You assume chinese nationals in the PLA are. Are chinese nationals in California working for Apple the enemy, too? What about chinese nationals in China not in the PLA that just work on the line? My point via the contrived example is they countries are fictions and so is citizenship and presence in one or “possession” of one is no way a litmus test for “adversary” or even a reasonable proxy. “China” isn’t a person, and so “China” can’t be an adversary. (Even if it could, that would be dumb, for reasons explained above.)
  - thstart 8y ago
    You are for globalism -and which side of the table are you on?
- jerf 8y ago
  I find that theory very problematic though, because A: it's not terribly necessary B: the government did not particularly jump on this as it would have if this was coordinated propaganda, and let's be honest C: if you want to make that case there's probably 25 equally large, true stories that could be published if the intelligence agencies were willing to burn a few sources or something as they seemed to in this story. It's not as if the espionage status-quo is "nobody's hacking anybody else, because everyone's afraid of the consequences if they do"; what public evidence we have suggests the status quo is more akin to a free-for-all. Heck, just the HN replies to previous discussion on this story had some comments from people who had jobs for a while detecting espionage on their boards, which were created precisely because some was found prior to that. For instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138699 You could make more hay with that story than a faked-up one. There's no need to lie for propaganda's sake, because the truth would be more than adequate! (The propaganda element would be in the spin and claims about the scale of the problem, not the brute facts, which certainly exist.) If this ever was government propaganda, they changed their mind before finishing the job and hung Bloomberg out to dry. At the moment, the best theory that seems to fit all the facts, including the comments from people who were interviewed for the story, is a not-sufficiently-technical reporter very motivated to tell this story (perhaps because of the reward for stories that move the markets?) who compounded confusion upon confusion in a domain they were suffering from Dunning-Kruger until they were able to write that story. And presumably, similar problems in the fact-checking and editorial staff. I'm still not guaranteeing this, but I'm giving it at least 75% at this point.
  - flycaliguy 8y ago
    I like this answer the best but your comment about the government setting up Bloomberg does make me wonder. Bloomberg (the man) may very well be preparing to challenge Trump for the presidency and this could all be the Trump administration playing games.
- avip 8y ago
  It's also "the exact kind of story you would want" in order to: - PR a HW verification firm. - manipulate a stock - and many more
  - aero142 8y ago
    The reason I'm wildly speculating in this particular direction is that Bloomberg is claiming lots of unspecified high level government employees are their source.
goshx 8y ago
They have become a disappointment for me. A lot of misleading articles, paid promotional content, and so on. Now this one... I have blocked them completely from my social media and news sources.
- Drdrdrq 8y ago
  Oh, so you know what the truth is in this case? Good for you! /s
  - MertsA 8y ago
    Bloomberg listed a lot of entities in that article and every single one that wasn't anonymous has all but called Bloomberg outright frauds over it. They have all sorts of anonymous sources telling them anything and everything about this supposed plot yet none of them provided any shred of evidence to back up their claims. Where's the smoking gun here? Why don't we have die shots of this thing? Why hasn't anyone on this very forum seen the C&C traffic from it phoning home to see if it was a target? Nothing about their explanation even seems remotely plausible. Why on earth would the attacker ever do something as obvious and annoying to deal with as what they supposedly did with altering the layout of the board and adding components instead of just backdooring the BMC? Are we supposed to believe that they were simultaneously competent enough to pull off Bloomberg's fairytale but too incompetent to have an altered BMC load backdoored firmware internally instead of off of an EEPROM chip on the board? I'm not saying that we should rush to conclusions but Bloomberg has provided absolutely no sources with any shred of credibility. There's nothing to substantiate anything so why should the default stance be anything other than to consider that article a piece of cyberpunk fanfiction?
    - Drdrdrq 8y ago
      What do you expect Bloomberg to do? Give up their sources? I'm sure they will have no trouble getting new stories if they did that, right? Given the size of the story and their commitment to it I would bet they were duped. There are many who would like to see them lose credibility, who would like to further escalate trade war with China, or who simply shorted some stocks... Or all of the above. But that's a bet, not an opinion. I do however have a problem with someone taking sides so eagerly, without admitting that they don't have a clue. Or if they do, please enlighten us. I'm sure their sources are better than Bloombergs.
buboard 8y ago
Could it be foreign propaganda?
- meowface 8y ago
  I would be surprised if Bloomberg fell for foreign propaganda. I don't think they'd write an article like this without American sources within, or related to, the companies involved. It's possible there was a game of telephone or something else where the sources Bloomberg spoke with somehow ended up believing foreign propaganda, but I'm a bit skeptical of that.
pastor_elm 8y ago
If someone misled them, Tim Cook should be aware of it considering they claim to have multiple sources at Apple. It would have to a pretty big conspiracy for those sources alone to be tied to some outside attempt at disinformation. Either that or Bloomberg is lying.
emilfihlman 8y ago
Bloomberg? Sounds more like Bloomberg was the messenger and is being silenced.
- chipotle_coyote 8y ago
  If Bloomberg was "being silenced," we...all wouldn't be talking about this. I'm aware how pedantic this may come across, but words matter, and in cases like this it seems dreadfully important not to fuel or even create conspiracy theories through carelessly (or perhaps carefully) chosen phrasing. It's possible that Bloomberg got everything right, and that the vigorous denials from the cited companies and the objections from their own named sources and the actual denials (rather than "non-denial denials") from government agencies and the continued lack of corroboration from any other independent investigative or journalistic organizations is all part of a massive coordinated conspiracy to discredit this reporting, which this same international cross-government/corporate cabal somehow couldn't just stop from getting out. But is it likely? Really?
  - mark-r 8y ago
    Not silenced, but discredited. A preemptive strike against future exposes.
jrnichols 8y ago
embarrassing, or will they just ignore it and never publish a retraction? I have the feeling they'll just ignore it. Like they have with all of the other totally false Apple stories. Bloomberg is unreliable when it comes to Apple.

Man, I am now 90% convinced that someone intentionally misled Bloomberg. It looks like this may end up being an extremely embarrassing episode for them.

by fhood 8y ago

Man, I am now 90% convinced that someone intentionally misled Bloomberg. It looks like this may end up being an extremely embarrassing episode for them.

flamtap 8y ago

And potentially a group of people. Maybe I am giving Bloomberg too much credit at this point, but their article cites a number of sources -- albeit anonymous ones -- and I think it could very well be a coordinated effort from a group of interested parties.

acqq 8y ago
See what one of the sources says: https://risky.biz/RB517_feature/ https://risky.biz/RB517_feature/ He showed the “emails he sent to Bloomberg, prior to the story’s publication, that said the hardware back-dooring the article described “didn’t make sense”.” Another text about that source: https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/08/security-researcher-cited-in-bloombergs-china-spy-chip-investigation-casts-doubt-on-storys-veracity https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/08/security-r...

aero142 8y ago

It's all just speculation but this seems like the exact kind of story you would want in order to pass some legislation to prevent foreign manufactured chips being used by USG.

lwansbrough 8y ago
I'm all for globalism but that's one area where the best strategy is probably to keep production inside the borders. Not that I'd condone misleading the press to create a case for the legislation.
- sneak 8y ago
  Yes, manufacture the high security chips on one of the many 7nm fabs in the US. I suppose it also follows that the fab and design should be staffed only as NOFORN? That rules out the lead on the Apple silicon team. I don’t think you understand how this works. This isn’t a nationalism vs globalism thing.
  - lwansbrough 8y ago
    You're the one that jumped from no foreign production to no "foreign" employees. Of course there's a difference between a factory operating under the supervision of the People's Liberation Army and an immigrant working in a lead role at a company. My comment is basically a pre-reaction to nationalists who would want to use this situation as an excuse to bring as much manufacturing work home as possible, even if it doesn't make sense (and if this were all a ruse, it would be a good way to get the White House on board.) Granted, it would also be pretty dumb to trust your adversary (from a national defence perspective) to build your weapons for you. Which is what the US is doing to a certain degree. Of course this is about globalism, because it's what lead to this situation in the first place. But nationalism, importantly, is not the solution. That's what I hope people take away from this.
    - sneak 8y ago
      Who is the adversary, though? You assume chinese nationals in the PLA are. Are chinese nationals in California working for Apple the enemy, too? What about chinese nationals in China not in the PLA that just work on the line? My point via the contrived example is they countries are fictions and so is citizenship and presence in one or “possession” of one is no way a litmus test for “adversary” or even a reasonable proxy. “China” isn’t a person, and so “China” can’t be an adversary. (Even if it could, that would be dumb, for reasons explained above.)
- thstart 8y ago
  You are for globalism -and which side of the table are you on?
jerf 8y ago
I find that theory very problematic though, because A: it's not terribly necessary B: the government did not particularly jump on this as it would have if this was coordinated propaganda, and let's be honest C: if you want to make that case there's probably 25 equally large, true stories that could be published if the intelligence agencies were willing to burn a few sources or something as they seemed to in this story. It's not as if the espionage status-quo is "nobody's hacking anybody else, because everyone's afraid of the consequences if they do"; what public evidence we have suggests the status quo is more akin to a free-for-all. Heck, just the HN replies to previous discussion on this story had some comments from people who had jobs for a while detecting espionage on their boards, which were created precisely because some was found prior to that. For instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138699 You could make more hay with that story than a faked-up one. There's no need to lie for propaganda's sake, because the truth would be more than adequate! (The propaganda element would be in the spin and claims about the scale of the problem, not the brute facts, which certainly exist.) If this ever was government propaganda, they changed their mind before finishing the job and hung Bloomberg out to dry. At the moment, the best theory that seems to fit all the facts, including the comments from people who were interviewed for the story, is a not-sufficiently-technical reporter very motivated to tell this story (perhaps because of the reward for stories that move the markets?) who compounded confusion upon confusion in a domain they were suffering from Dunning-Kruger until they were able to write that story. And presumably, similar problems in the fact-checking and editorial staff. I'm still not guaranteeing this, but I'm giving it at least 75% at this point.
- flycaliguy 8y ago
  I like this answer the best but your comment about the government setting up Bloomberg does make me wonder. Bloomberg (the man) may very well be preparing to challenge Trump for the presidency and this could all be the Trump administration playing games.
avip 8y ago
It's also "the exact kind of story you would want" in order to: - PR a HW verification firm. - manipulate a stock - and many more
- aero142 8y ago
  The reason I'm wildly speculating in this particular direction is that Bloomberg is claiming lots of unspecified high level government employees are their source.

goshx 8y ago

They have become a disappointment for me. A lot of misleading articles, paid promotional content, and so on. Now this one... I have blocked them completely from my social media and news sources.

Drdrdrq 8y ago
Oh, so you know what the truth is in this case? Good for you! /s
- MertsA 8y ago
  Bloomberg listed a lot of entities in that article and every single one that wasn't anonymous has all but called Bloomberg outright frauds over it. They have all sorts of anonymous sources telling them anything and everything about this supposed plot yet none of them provided any shred of evidence to back up their claims. Where's the smoking gun here? Why don't we have die shots of this thing? Why hasn't anyone on this very forum seen the C&C traffic from it phoning home to see if it was a target? Nothing about their explanation even seems remotely plausible. Why on earth would the attacker ever do something as obvious and annoying to deal with as what they supposedly did with altering the layout of the board and adding components instead of just backdooring the BMC? Are we supposed to believe that they were simultaneously competent enough to pull off Bloomberg's fairytale but too incompetent to have an altered BMC load backdoored firmware internally instead of off of an EEPROM chip on the board? I'm not saying that we should rush to conclusions but Bloomberg has provided absolutely no sources with any shred of credibility. There's nothing to substantiate anything so why should the default stance be anything other than to consider that article a piece of cyberpunk fanfiction?
  - Drdrdrq 8y ago
    What do you expect Bloomberg to do? Give up their sources? I'm sure they will have no trouble getting new stories if they did that, right? Given the size of the story and their commitment to it I would bet they were duped. There are many who would like to see them lose credibility, who would like to further escalate trade war with China, or who simply shorted some stocks... Or all of the above. But that's a bet, not an opinion. I do however have a problem with someone taking sides so eagerly, without admitting that they don't have a clue. Or if they do, please enlighten us. I'm sure their sources are better than Bloombergs.

buboard 8y ago

Could it be foreign propaganda?

meowface 8y ago
I would be surprised if Bloomberg fell for foreign propaganda. I don't think they'd write an article like this without American sources within, or related to, the companies involved. It's possible there was a game of telephone or something else where the sources Bloomberg spoke with somehow ended up believing foreign propaganda, but I'm a bit skeptical of that.

pastor_elm 8y ago

If someone misled them, Tim Cook should be aware of it considering they claim to have multiple sources at Apple. It would have to a pretty big conspiracy for those sources alone to be tied to some outside attempt at disinformation. Either that or Bloomberg is lying.

emilfihlman 8y ago

Bloomberg? Sounds more like Bloomberg was the messenger and is being silenced.

chipotle_coyote 8y ago
If Bloomberg was "being silenced," we...all wouldn't be talking about this. I'm aware how pedantic this may come across, but words matter, and in cases like this it seems dreadfully important not to fuel or even create conspiracy theories through carelessly (or perhaps carefully) chosen phrasing. It's possible that Bloomberg got everything right, and that the vigorous denials from the cited companies and the objections from their own named sources and the actual denials (rather than "non-denial denials") from government agencies and the continued lack of corroboration from any other independent investigative or journalistic organizations is all part of a massive coordinated conspiracy to discredit this reporting, which this same international cross-government/corporate cabal somehow couldn't just stop from getting out. But is it likely? Really?
- mark-r 8y ago
  Not silenced, but discredited. A preemptive strike against future exposes.

jrnichols 8y ago

embarrassing, or will they just ignore it and never publish a retraction? I have the feeling they'll just ignore it. Like they have with all of the other totally false Apple stories. Bloomberg is unreliable when it comes to Apple.