12 ms·

Huh. so shortly after the story broke, I bought a bunch of SMCI. (It's actually the first OTC stock I've ever bought. It was easier than I thought, too... I h

by lsc 7y ago

Huh. so shortly after the story broke, I bought a bunch of SMCI. (It's actually the first OTC stock I've ever bought. It was easier than I thought, too... I had to call vanguard to enable OTC trading, but after that? super easy.) I sold it months later, at a pretty good profit, mostly 'cause while I think the bloomburg accusations are clearly false, there are huge accounting irregularities surrounding supermicro; getting delisted is no joke, and I'm super not qualified to evaluate that sort of risk. but, my reasoning? my reasoning was that if it was a widespread physical hack, someone would discover it fairly quickly; I mean, people were tearing these boards apart, looking for anything. There's no way they could keep that quiet, even if they were willing to disappear people. I can tell you that within my peer group, Bloomberg has taken a pretty huge reputational hit. I mean, sure, we all still read 'money stuff' because it's "the daily show" for financial news. It's great entertainment, and moderately edifying. But, you know, it's one of those things where after a newspaper writes about something in your field, you start wondering if they are that ridiculously uninformed about the things that aren't in your field. So, I felt really pretty safe with buying in the dip.

jandrese 7y ago
There was a theory going around that the whole story was just and elaborate stock manipulation scheme.
- pmilla1606 7y ago
  But orchestrated by who? Surely not Bloomberg as they'd have too much to lose. And if you have the means to do something like this, why not do it in a more subtle way that doesn't have people asking questions 6 months later? I'm not suggesting you're wrong and I have no clue what happened.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Who knows? Presumably whomever wrote the original story for Bloomburg and made the photos is involved somehow but beyond that it's anyone's guess. What is Bloomburg going to lose here? Their reputation? They're already considered something of a gossip rag for financial news. FTC action? Unlikely.
    - redwards510 7y ago
      > made the photos uh, the pictures of a tiny rice-sized chip from the story were just photo illustrations. They were not supposed to be evidence of anything. It said so in the margins.
  - wl 7y ago
    The reporter. https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...
    - modzu 7y ago
      what kind of keyboard is that?
      - keyle 7y ago
        That's a bloomberg terminal keyboard.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
patorjk 7y ago
When Tim Cook came out against the story, I did the same thing. It just didn't seem plausible that he would be lying. Then add to that Joe Fitzpatrick's (one of the named sources) discomfort about the story, and something seemed wrong. Time seems to have validated this idea somewhat, but it is interesting that Bloomberg has stood by the story.
- derefr 7y ago
  > it is interesting that Bloomberg has stood by the story My guess as to why: one of their reporters was misled by a trusted source, or multiple trusted sources (who were maybe actually catspaws of some-group-or-other who would benefit from getting this story out.) So now, although Bloomberg would like to speak truth by issuing a retraction, such a move would likely severely damage the original reporter's career; and they don't want to do that for something that wasn't that reporter's fault. Having some corporation or government agency with tons of resources come along and force or trick a reporter into running a story, would be the journalism equivalent of an insurance agency's "act of God" waiver clause. I would guess that every major news outlet has a policy for protecting and defending reporters who—by hook or by crook—get used as patsies by forces out of the news outlet's control.
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    In that scenario, the obvious solution is to publish a new story and name names of all the people who lied to get the story published. If you lie to a newspaper to get fake news published, you no longer have any right to remain off the record. That's what a newspaper with integrity would do.
    - kevingadd 7y ago
      That requires having a degree of certainty supporting any attempt to name names. If you're not certain they lied to you, then your new story is potentially libel. For example, let's say they were given information they were certain was correct, and they handed it to a journalist in confidence. They're a trusted source. You both got duped. What's the value in burning them publicly, especially if you're going to do it by calling them a liar and exposing yourself to risk? There are cases where the press really needs to take people to task but the amount of secrecy and ambiguity in this story makes it seem like a case where it can't (or shouldn't) be done.
theklub 7y ago
When you take this into account it makes me wonder what the motives could be... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162440 (bloomberg paying based on market movement)
nullc 7y ago
> Huh. so shortly after the story broke, I bought a bunch of SMCI. Likewise. Almost doubled my money before taxes. My reasoning was that essentially no tech infrastructure company has significantly suffered financially due to security incompetence and it was unlikely that it would start with SMCI especially since it wasn't even being claimed that the company was in on it. Nothing even seemed to allege any particular error on SMCI's part, certainly not one that essentially every vendor isn't also making. The idea that the report could be wrong wasn't a factor for me, only that the marketplace would continue to not care. (I find it hard to believe that it's entirely wrong: I am unwilling to believe that major state intelligence orgs are so incompetent that they are never backdooring hardware in that manner).
jhallenworld 7y ago
Likewise, it's been good until the recent tariff war news. I made similar money in the 2008 crash betting that certain banks would not fail.
- dylan604 7y ago
  After 9/11, American Airlines took a beating. I was in my 20s and had no clue about stocks. I went to my IRA guy, and asked to buy AA stock. I was told because it was down in the penny stocks they could not sell it. I had no idea of how else to buy stocks, and let it go. Regret that every time I think about it.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    Cheer up kid, I went all in on Apple stock with the debut of the iPhone. A year or so later lost it all in the crash. Value approx $2.25 million today.
cantrevealname 7y ago
> I mean, people were tearing these boards apart, looking for anything. There's no way they could keep that quiet, even if they were willing to disappear people. Without commenting on whether or not I believe the Bloomberg story, I very much doubt that "people were tearing these boards apart", doing reverse hardware-level engineering looking for an unknown. Even in the case of open-source software, with full source code and documentation available, the number of people who analyze code is miniscule. Doing the same thing with ICs and PCBs, without engineering diagrams and documentation, and needing very specialized skills and tools, must be 1000x more difficult. Maybe Supermicro and some intelligence agencies did internal studies, but they aren't going to tell you anything. Perhaps Apple and Amazon asked around in their engineering departments to see if anyone saw something. Possibly a couple security researchers took a look to see if they saw something obvious. But I don't think teams of experts were mobilized all around the world trying to pinpoint a deeply hidden hardware vulnerability. I'd love to be proven wrong. Hacker News is read by ~50,000 engineers and programmers and related professionals a day. Admittedly my comment won't reach 50,000 people, but I'll ask anyway: Is there anyone reading here who personally analyzed a Supermicro board in any meaningful way, or knows anyone who personally did so?
- derefr 7y ago
  I mean, it's not that expensive to just take some hi-res X-ray photos of old and new boards of the same make, and compare the trace paths near each component. Maybe you can even take a visual diff of the X-ray negatives, if you can get everything lined up tightly enough. You can parallelize this search, because the people doing it don't need to know much about what they're looking for—they're just hunting for visual differences. Unless/until one of them actually finds anything different. At that point, you need better resources to figure out what's different; but at that point, all hell also breaks loose, and you'll get all the resources and help you need to do better analyses.
  - cantrevealname 7y ago
    > Unless/until one of them actually finds anything different ... at that point, all hell also breaks loose Boards bought weeks or months apart might have lots of differences in traces and components due to engineering modifications and normal changes in suppliers. Do you really think that all hell would break loose if you showed that there were differences between a Supermicro board made in March 2018 and one made in September 2018? Other than maybe Supermicro or intelligence agencies (who aren't talking), I doubt that anyone has done what you've suggested. People are busy and it's a lot of work based on an allegation and no exact place to look.
dockd 7y ago
> But, you know, it's one of those things where after a newspaper writes about something in your field, you start wondering if they are that ridiculously uninformed about the things that aren't in your field. Or maybe you keep reading because you believe the other things, see the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ETHisso2017 7y ago
Friend tells me that it's the National Security Council - and specifically Matt Pottinger - feeding these stories to Bloomberg. The goal is to force US companies to shift their electronics supply chain away from China.
- anarazel 7y ago
  That's an interesting theory that I'd not heard before (and haven't found iterated anywhere within a few minutes of searching). Any additional details / references?

by lsc 7y ago

jandrese 7y ago

There was a theory going around that the whole story was just and elaborate stock manipulation scheme.

pmilla1606 7y ago
But orchestrated by who? Surely not Bloomberg as they'd have too much to lose. And if you have the means to do something like this, why not do it in a more subtle way that doesn't have people asking questions 6 months later? I'm not suggesting you're wrong and I have no clue what happened.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Who knows? Presumably whomever wrote the original story for Bloomburg and made the photos is involved somehow but beyond that it's anyone's guess. What is Bloomburg going to lose here? Their reputation? They're already considered something of a gossip rag for financial news. FTC action? Unlikely.
  - redwards510 7y ago
    > made the photos uh, the pictures of a tiny rice-sized chip from the story were just photo illustrations. They were not supposed to be evidence of anything. It said so in the margins.
- wl 7y ago
  The reporter. https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...
  - modzu 7y ago
    what kind of keyboard is that?
    - keyle 7y ago
      That's a bloomberg terminal keyboard.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

patorjk 7y ago

When Tim Cook came out against the story, I did the same thing. It just didn't seem plausible that he would be lying. Then add to that Joe Fitzpatrick's (one of the named sources) discomfort about the story, and something seemed wrong. Time seems to have validated this idea somewhat, but it is interesting that Bloomberg has stood by the story.

derefr 7y ago
> it is interesting that Bloomberg has stood by the story My guess as to why: one of their reporters was misled by a trusted source, or multiple trusted sources (who were maybe actually catspaws of some-group-or-other who would benefit from getting this story out.) So now, although Bloomberg would like to speak truth by issuing a retraction, such a move would likely severely damage the original reporter's career; and they don't want to do that for something that wasn't that reporter's fault. Having some corporation or government agency with tons of resources come along and force or trick a reporter into running a story, would be the journalism equivalent of an insurance agency's "act of God" waiver clause. I would guess that every major news outlet has a policy for protecting and defending reporters who—by hook or by crook—get used as patsies by forces out of the news outlet's control.
- ikeboy 7y ago
  In that scenario, the obvious solution is to publish a new story and name names of all the people who lied to get the story published. If you lie to a newspaper to get fake news published, you no longer have any right to remain off the record. That's what a newspaper with integrity would do.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    That requires having a degree of certainty supporting any attempt to name names. If you're not certain they lied to you, then your new story is potentially libel. For example, let's say they were given information they were certain was correct, and they handed it to a journalist in confidence. They're a trusted source. You both got duped. What's the value in burning them publicly, especially if you're going to do it by calling them a liar and exposing yourself to risk? There are cases where the press really needs to take people to task but the amount of secrecy and ambiguity in this story makes it seem like a case where it can't (or shouldn't) be done.

theklub 7y ago

When you take this into account it makes me wonder what the motives could be... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162440 (bloomberg paying based on market movement)

nullc 7y ago

> Huh. so shortly after the story broke, I bought a bunch of SMCI. Likewise. Almost doubled my money before taxes. My reasoning was that essentially no tech infrastructure company has significantly suffered financially due to security incompetence and it was unlikely that it would start with SMCI especially since it wasn't even being claimed that the company was in on it. Nothing even seemed to allege any particular error on SMCI's part, certainly not one that essentially every vendor isn't also making. The idea that the report could be wrong wasn't a factor for me, only that the marketplace would continue to not care. (I find it hard to believe that it's entirely wrong: I am unwilling to believe that major state intelligence orgs are so incompetent that they are never backdooring hardware in that manner).

jhallenworld 7y ago

Likewise, it's been good until the recent tariff war news. I made similar money in the 2008 crash betting that certain banks would not fail.

dylan604 7y ago
After 9/11, American Airlines took a beating. I was in my 20s and had no clue about stocks. I went to my IRA guy, and asked to buy AA stock. I was told because it was down in the penny stocks they could not sell it. I had no idea of how else to buy stocks, and let it go. Regret that every time I think about it.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Cheer up kid, I went all in on Apple stock with the debut of the iPhone. A year or so later lost it all in the crash. Value approx $2.25 million today.

cantrevealname 7y ago

> I mean, people were tearing these boards apart, looking for anything. There's no way they could keep that quiet, even if they were willing to disappear people. Without commenting on whether or not I believe the Bloomberg story, I very much doubt that "people were tearing these boards apart", doing reverse hardware-level engineering looking for an unknown. Even in the case of open-source software, with full source code and documentation available, the number of people who analyze code is miniscule. Doing the same thing with ICs and PCBs, without engineering diagrams and documentation, and needing very specialized skills and tools, must be 1000x more difficult. Maybe Supermicro and some intelligence agencies did internal studies, but they aren't going to tell you anything. Perhaps Apple and Amazon asked around in their engineering departments to see if anyone saw something. Possibly a couple security researchers took a look to see if they saw something obvious. But I don't think teams of experts were mobilized all around the world trying to pinpoint a deeply hidden hardware vulnerability. I'd love to be proven wrong. Hacker News is read by ~50,000 engineers and programmers and related professionals a day. Admittedly my comment won't reach 50,000 people, but I'll ask anyway: Is there anyone reading here who personally analyzed a Supermicro board in any meaningful way, or knows anyone who personally did so?

derefr 7y ago
I mean, it's not that expensive to just take some hi-res X-ray photos of old and new boards of the same make, and compare the trace paths near each component. Maybe you can even take a visual diff of the X-ray negatives, if you can get everything lined up tightly enough. You can parallelize this search, because the people doing it don't need to know much about what they're looking for—they're just hunting for visual differences. Unless/until one of them actually finds anything different. At that point, you need better resources to figure out what's different; but at that point, all hell also breaks loose, and you'll get all the resources and help you need to do better analyses.
- cantrevealname 7y ago
  > Unless/until one of them actually finds anything different ... at that point, all hell also breaks loose Boards bought weeks or months apart might have lots of differences in traces and components due to engineering modifications and normal changes in suppliers. Do you really think that all hell would break loose if you showed that there were differences between a Supermicro board made in March 2018 and one made in September 2018? Other than maybe Supermicro or intelligence agencies (who aren't talking), I doubt that anyone has done what you've suggested. People are busy and it's a lot of work based on an allegation and no exact place to look.

dockd 7y ago

> But, you know, it's one of those things where after a newspaper writes about something in your field, you start wondering if they are that ridiculously uninformed about the things that aren't in your field. Or maybe you keep reading because you believe the other things, see the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ETHisso2017 7y ago

Friend tells me that it's the National Security Council - and specifically Matt Pottinger - feeding these stories to Bloomberg. The goal is to force US companies to shift their electronics supply chain away from China.

anarazel 7y ago
That's an interesting theory that I'd not heard before (and haven't found iterated anywhere within a few minutes of searching). Any additional details / references?