5 ms·

I'm a little bothered by the article title because it implies it's related to the manufacturer being from China, despite ample evidence that pretend-reputable s

I'm a little bothered by the article title because it implies it's related to the manufacturer being from China, despite ample evidence that pretend-reputable software vendors like Google, Amazon and Microsoft all bundle universal backdoors with their systems. Google infamously pushed settings changes on their phone lines without user consent via the Google Play Services backdoor. Amazon removed the (bought) book 1984 from all Kindles. Microsoft proudly bragged about their remote app "kill switch". Let's not even talk about about CPU vendors embedding "anti-theft" solutions which are nothing more than RCE-as-a-service on a hardware/firmware level. Or hardware vendors bundling rootkits like Lenovo on some laptop series, and most phone manufacturers on all their devices.

the_dripper 5y ago
Do you perhaps have a link about the story of amazon removing the 1984 book on all kindles? It sounds very interesting, partly because it seems so absurd.
- dec0dedab0de 5y ago
  https://www.pcworld.com/article/519855/amazon_kindle_1984_lawsuit.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/519855/amazon_kindle_1984_la... That story is about a lawsuit from one of the people they took it from. Amazon sold 1984 on the Kindle store without permission, and when they realized their error they deleted it from everyone's kindle and refunded their money.
  - tgv 5y ago
    That's really something entirely different than malware. You know that Amazon books on kindle are subject to that. It's not malware on the Kindle, it's their whole schtick.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      The best way to fix malware is to refer to it as your business model.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      > You know that Amazon books on kindle are subject to that. Most people don't. And the few that do only know because of this scandal. There's something profoundly unintuitive about it. When you buy 5$ a book in the bookstore, you can't wake up some day with the door open, 5$ on your table and the book gone from your library.
    - dec0dedab0de 5y ago
      That's really something entirely different than malware. You know that Amazon books on kindle are subject to that. It's not malware on the Kindle, it's their whole schtick. At the time it was suspected, but unknown. I remember the outrage, I'm not sure If I was lurking on here before I made an account, or I read it on slashdot or digg or something. Here are the HN comments from the time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=710506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=710506
      - tgv 5y ago
        Interesting, but at least some people seem to have been aware.
- CrazyStat 5y ago
  Here's a writeup [1]. A third party started selling kindle editions of 1984 and Animal Farm through Amazon despite not having any rights to do so. When they found out (presumably the rights holders complained), Amazon deleted the unauthorized editions. [1] https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle-5317703 https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-ki...
natch 5y ago
China is next level though. If that bothers anyone, that’s understandable; it should.
jacknews 5y ago
Do any of them steal IP, as is alleged here, and has certainly happened in other cases involving Chinese, often state-controlled, companies?
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Do companies hire/recruit (ex-)employees from competitors to re-implement the same features? Yes. Lots of IP between your ears. No point in the code/manuals/docs when you wrote them yourself. You’ll know they’re not exactly correct and may appreciate being able rewrite from the ground-up now knowing what you now know.
  - jacknews 5y ago
    Sure, but if the employee brings along the architecture documents or the source code, that's theft. What's alleged here is that a CHinese company is exfiltrating actual PCB designs via PnP machine malware.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Do western artists and corporations borrow stuff from other cultures and competitors? All 20th century rock & roll, most of hollywood, and pretty much all of pre-90s Silicon Valley is based on that premise. That you think it's theft is a debatable/controversial point of view on Internet forums, but if that is to be the case, many more people/corporations from USA should feel threatened, not just a few chinese scapegoats which help avoid the elephant in the room: why would anyone own ideas in the first place? Ideas are born out of other ideas and every one benefits from that. Restricting knowledge sharing can lead to disastrous outcomes as Jonathan Blow brilliantly argued in a talk called Preventing the collapse of Civilization which appears to pop up on HN every so often: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk
  - jacknews 5y ago
    Um, no, there's a very clear difference between 'borrowing' ideas, building on other people's achievements etc, and outright theft, when you copy someone's detailed designs wholesale, especially from secret proprietary plans obtained through illegal espionage.
692 5y ago
I was royally pissed off when I suspected my brand new Lenovo laptop was acting strange. The only in the end to stop it was to reinstall the OS, I then later found out it was the superfish issue https://slate.com/technology/2015/02/lenovo-superfish-scandal-why-its-one-of-the-worst-consumer-computing-screw-ups-ever.html https://slate.com/technology/2015/02/lenovo-superfish-scanda... I will never buy Lenovo again
- southerntofu 5y ago
  The problem is more or less all hardware manufacturers do that. There's variations: some bundle only the Windows backdoor, some bundle Superfish, some bundle Intel/AMD's anti-theft and ME/PSP features. That society is ok with that is a huge problem to say the least.
  - 692 5y ago
    I doubt you can compare superfish against bloatware antitheft "feature"
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      And yet my CPU runs its own operating system (Minix) behind my back and reacts to undocumented secret commands i'm unaware of. Is the comparison that irrelevant?
      - 692 5y ago
        I'm not defending ME/PSP at all, i would happily burn the CPUs off, if I could. I totally agree completely on your statement > That society is ok with that is a huge problem to say the least. but you could compare any bad actor actions to ME/PSP and say it's the same or not as bad it's bordering on Whataboutery
        southerntofu 5y ago
        I personally find the two questions awfully related: i'm buying hardware that performs operations without my knowledge/consent and answers to someone else's commands. Now one may genuinely believe there are valid usecases for this (i don't), but it's not exactly "whataboutism" as i'm definitely not trying to refute the original argument that pre-bundled malware is bad. Although i personally consider hardware/firmware-level malware more troubling than OS-level malware which you can just wipe away by setting up a fresh system (which i recommend anyone to do when they receive a new machine, for related reasons).

the_dripper 5y ago

Do you perhaps have a link about the story of amazon removing the 1984 book on all kindles? It sounds very interesting, partly because it seems so absurd.

dec0dedab0de 5y ago
https://www.pcworld.com/article/519855/amazon_kindle_1984_lawsuit.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/519855/amazon_kindle_1984_la... That story is about a lawsuit from one of the people they took it from. Amazon sold 1984 on the Kindle store without permission, and when they realized their error they deleted it from everyone's kindle and refunded their money.
- tgv 5y ago
  That's really something entirely different than malware. You know that Amazon books on kindle are subject to that. It's not malware on the Kindle, it's their whole schtick.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    The best way to fix malware is to refer to it as your business model.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > You know that Amazon books on kindle are subject to that. Most people don't. And the few that do only know because of this scandal. There's something profoundly unintuitive about it. When you buy 5$ a book in the bookstore, you can't wake up some day with the door open, 5$ on your table and the book gone from your library.
  - dec0dedab0de 5y ago
    That's really something entirely different than malware. You know that Amazon books on kindle are subject to that. It's not malware on the Kindle, it's their whole schtick. At the time it was suspected, but unknown. I remember the outrage, I'm not sure If I was lurking on here before I made an account, or I read it on slashdot or digg or something. Here are the HN comments from the time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=710506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=710506
    - tgv 5y ago
      Interesting, but at least some people seem to have been aware.
CrazyStat 5y ago
Here's a writeup [1]. A third party started selling kindle editions of 1984 and Animal Farm through Amazon despite not having any rights to do so. When they found out (presumably the rights holders complained), Amazon deleted the unauthorized editions. [1] https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle-5317703 https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-ki...

natch 5y ago

China is next level though. If that bothers anyone, that’s understandable; it should.

jacknews 5y ago

Do any of them steal IP, as is alleged here, and has certainly happened in other cases involving Chinese, often state-controlled, companies?

Scoundreller 5y ago
Do companies hire/recruit (ex-)employees from competitors to re-implement the same features? Yes. Lots of IP between your ears. No point in the code/manuals/docs when you wrote them yourself. You’ll know they’re not exactly correct and may appreciate being able rewrite from the ground-up now knowing what you now know.
- jacknews 5y ago
  Sure, but if the employee brings along the architecture documents or the source code, that's theft. What's alleged here is that a CHinese company is exfiltrating actual PCB designs via PnP machine malware.
southerntofu 5y ago
Do western artists and corporations borrow stuff from other cultures and competitors? All 20th century rock & roll, most of hollywood, and pretty much all of pre-90s Silicon Valley is based on that premise. That you think it's theft is a debatable/controversial point of view on Internet forums, but if that is to be the case, many more people/corporations from USA should feel threatened, not just a few chinese scapegoats which help avoid the elephant in the room: why would anyone own ideas in the first place? Ideas are born out of other ideas and every one benefits from that. Restricting knowledge sharing can lead to disastrous outcomes as Jonathan Blow brilliantly argued in a talk called Preventing the collapse of Civilization which appears to pop up on HN every so often: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk
- jacknews 5y ago
  Um, no, there's a very clear difference between 'borrowing' ideas, building on other people's achievements etc, and outright theft, when you copy someone's detailed designs wholesale, especially from secret proprietary plans obtained through illegal espionage.

692 5y ago

I was royally pissed off when I suspected my brand new Lenovo laptop was acting strange. The only in the end to stop it was to reinstall the OS, I then later found out it was the superfish issue https://slate.com/technology/2015/02/lenovo-superfish-scandal-why-its-one-of-the-worst-consumer-computing-screw-ups-ever.html https://slate.com/technology/2015/02/lenovo-superfish-scanda... I will never buy Lenovo again

southerntofu 5y ago
The problem is more or less all hardware manufacturers do that. There's variations: some bundle only the Windows backdoor, some bundle Superfish, some bundle Intel/AMD's anti-theft and ME/PSP features. That society is ok with that is a huge problem to say the least.
- 692 5y ago
  I doubt you can compare superfish against bloatware antitheft "feature"
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    And yet my CPU runs its own operating system (Minix) behind my back and reacts to undocumented secret commands i'm unaware of. Is the comparison that irrelevant?
    - 692 5y ago
      I'm not defending ME/PSP at all, i would happily burn the CPUs off, if I could. I totally agree completely on your statement > That society is ok with that is a huge problem to say the least. but you could compare any bad actor actions to ME/PSP and say it's the same or not as bad it's bordering on Whataboutery
      - southerntofu 5y ago
        I personally find the two questions awfully related: i'm buying hardware that performs operations without my knowledge/consent and answers to someone else's commands. Now one may genuinely believe there are valid usecases for this (i don't), but it's not exactly "whataboutism" as i'm definitely not trying to refute the original argument that pre-bundled malware is bad. Although i personally consider hardware/firmware-level malware more troubling than OS-level malware which you can just wipe away by setting up a fresh system (which i recommend anyone to do when they receive a new machine, for related reasons).