4 ms·

What bothers me is that we have no proof and everything is vague. The motherboard needs to account for the chip at the PCB traces level to work right? Did anybo

by gbin 8y ago

What bothers me is that we have no proof and everything is vague. The motherboard needs to account for the chip at the PCB traces level to work right? Did anybody saw a weird 6 traces converging at a point for no reason on all the motherboards on the market? What is the exact model? Which bus it is fed from? Give me the name of the bus instead of vague journalistic stuff! Send pictures, output captures, anything.

bonestamp2 8y ago
> Did anybody saw a weird 6 traces converging at a point for no reason on all the motherboards on the market? You do ask some good questions, but if apple can dropship my one macbook pro from China when I order it, I suspect they could dropship 1 (or many) of these boards to Apple, Amazon, etc when ordered. In other words, they wouldn't have to produce all of them with this special chip. Hell, they might only need to send one to each customer to infiltrate their network. If Apple ordered thousands of these, I doubt they would xray each one (assuming they're multi-layered boards).
- coliveira 8y ago
  You seem to forget how difficult it is to manufacture a single unit of a mother board to achieve the effect you're imagining. Do you really think they have a production line where every week or so they create a different mother board adding this circuit? Why in the world would they create these additional costs, and is it even economically justifiable? This whole story seems each day worse, just like believing in Big Foot.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    The whole point of inserting malicious hardware for shadowy intelligence-related reasons is that you do it either out of government coercion or via government funding. I don't know why it's so implausible that Chinese intelligence is using the Chinese tech industry to carry out their operations when American intelligence uses the American tech industry to carry out their operations. Nobody said PRISM was fake news because why would Apple and Google and Facebook invest in it; the actual investment came from NSA and the cooperation of these companies is via top secret FISA warrants. China doesn't even need to maintain the pretense of legality that the NSA does. Again, I don't think the Bloomberg story by itself is credible anymore, but I also don't think it's as implausible as you are making it sound.
  - moftz 8y ago
    If the board house has copies of the gerbers, which they should, someone could easily edit those to introduce a spot for the implant. And if they already have all of the drawings, they can just add those empty pads into the design so any inspection wouldn't raise alarm. Then install the actual implant post-inspection. Maybe they get lucky by just re-purposing unused pads from the original design and route the traces to where ever.
  - bonestamp2 8y ago
    > Do you really think they have a production line where every week or so they create a different mother board adding this circuit? No, I do not think that. I assume they hand modify a few boards at a time, just like the NSA. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... Modifying every single board would violate one of the tenants of spying... it would make it much more likely for the implant to be detected.
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
The device in the photographs is essentially a fancy multi-layer ceramic cap. It can't contain a silicon die without a manufactured cavity and a lid. There is no way to do that in such a small package.

by gbin 8y ago

bonestamp2 8y ago

> Did anybody saw a weird 6 traces converging at a point for no reason on all the motherboards on the market? You do ask some good questions, but if apple can dropship my one macbook pro from China when I order it, I suspect they could dropship 1 (or many) of these boards to Apple, Amazon, etc when ordered. In other words, they wouldn't have to produce all of them with this special chip. Hell, they might only need to send one to each customer to infiltrate their network. If Apple ordered thousands of these, I doubt they would xray each one (assuming they're multi-layered boards).

coliveira 8y ago
You seem to forget how difficult it is to manufacture a single unit of a mother board to achieve the effect you're imagining. Do you really think they have a production line where every week or so they create a different mother board adding this circuit? Why in the world would they create these additional costs, and is it even economically justifiable? This whole story seems each day worse, just like believing in Big Foot.
- philwelch 8y ago
  The whole point of inserting malicious hardware for shadowy intelligence-related reasons is that you do it either out of government coercion or via government funding. I don't know why it's so implausible that Chinese intelligence is using the Chinese tech industry to carry out their operations when American intelligence uses the American tech industry to carry out their operations. Nobody said PRISM was fake news because why would Apple and Google and Facebook invest in it; the actual investment came from NSA and the cooperation of these companies is via top secret FISA warrants. China doesn't even need to maintain the pretense of legality that the NSA does. Again, I don't think the Bloomberg story by itself is credible anymore, but I also don't think it's as implausible as you are making it sound.
- moftz 8y ago
  If the board house has copies of the gerbers, which they should, someone could easily edit those to introduce a spot for the implant. And if they already have all of the drawings, they can just add those empty pads into the design so any inspection wouldn't raise alarm. Then install the actual implant post-inspection. Maybe they get lucky by just re-purposing unused pads from the original design and route the traces to where ever.
- bonestamp2 8y ago
  > Do you really think they have a production line where every week or so they create a different mother board adding this circuit? No, I do not think that. I assume they hand modify a few boards at a time, just like the NSA. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... Modifying every single board would violate one of the tenants of spying... it would make it much more likely for the implant to be detected.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

The device in the photographs is essentially a fancy multi-layer ceramic cap. It can't contain a silicon die without a manufactured cavity and a lid. There is no way to do that in such a small package.