<story><title>The Big Hack: Statements From Amazon, Apple, Supermicro, Chinese Government</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-amazon-apple-supermicro-and-beijing-respond</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>simias</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of unsubstantiated assumptions. It&amp;#x27;s also explicitly denied by both Amazon:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;It’s untrue that AWS knew about a supply chain compromise&lt;p&gt;and Apple:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;we have conducted rigorous internal investigations based on their inquiries and each time we have found absolutely no evidence to support any of them.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no in &amp;quot;between the lines&amp;quot; or ambiguous wording there, they flat out deny it. Unless this small set of &amp;quot;TS&amp;#x2F;SCI cleared employees&amp;quot; worked completely on their own without reporting to anybody else in the company this means that they are lying in these statements.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s possible that they do just that but it&amp;#x27;s a bit strange to me that they wouldn&amp;#x27;t find an easier way to deflect the issue without using such a strong and explicit language. Something vague like &amp;quot;we&amp;#x27;ve been working with the authorities and have no reason to believe that any sensitive information has been leaked etc...&amp;quot; would be easier to spin if it turns out that somebody can prove that these attacks took place.&lt;p&gt;Surely if the scale of the attack was as large as reported by Bloomberg in their article it should be possible to find one of these backdoored boards in the wild? Or at least have testimonies by employees in these company that could testify that batches of motherboards were suddenly replaced for no obvious reasons?&lt;p&gt;And if trade war is the reason why deny it now? What do they have to gain from that, they&amp;#x27;re the victims in this story as far as I can tell.</text></item><item><author>hendzen</author><text>Apple and Amazon probably have a small set of TS&amp;#x2F;SCI cleared employees who dealt with this mess. It’s likely 99.99% of the employees at those firms had no idea what was going on. The switching out of thousands of compromised servers was probably made to look like routine maintenance or upgrades and the whole affair was kept secret. That is, until some high level government employees intentionally leaked it to the media, probably under direction of the White House to garner support for a more aggressive stance on China - the trade war in particular. Read between the lines.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>toyg</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; this means that they are lying in these statements.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cyberwar with China is the current equivalent of the old Cold War scuffles with the USSR in third countries. How many lies were told back then, to cover up the worst mishaps? And then they were &amp;quot;uncovered&amp;quot; when it was safer or more convenient to do so.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Big Hack: Statements From Amazon, Apple, Supermicro, Chinese Government</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-amazon-apple-supermicro-and-beijing-respond</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>simias</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of unsubstantiated assumptions. It&amp;#x27;s also explicitly denied by both Amazon:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;It’s untrue that AWS knew about a supply chain compromise&lt;p&gt;and Apple:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;we have conducted rigorous internal investigations based on their inquiries and each time we have found absolutely no evidence to support any of them.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no in &amp;quot;between the lines&amp;quot; or ambiguous wording there, they flat out deny it. Unless this small set of &amp;quot;TS&amp;#x2F;SCI cleared employees&amp;quot; worked completely on their own without reporting to anybody else in the company this means that they are lying in these statements.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s possible that they do just that but it&amp;#x27;s a bit strange to me that they wouldn&amp;#x27;t find an easier way to deflect the issue without using such a strong and explicit language. Something vague like &amp;quot;we&amp;#x27;ve been working with the authorities and have no reason to believe that any sensitive information has been leaked etc...&amp;quot; would be easier to spin if it turns out that somebody can prove that these attacks took place.&lt;p&gt;Surely if the scale of the attack was as large as reported by Bloomberg in their article it should be possible to find one of these backdoored boards in the wild? Or at least have testimonies by employees in these company that could testify that batches of motherboards were suddenly replaced for no obvious reasons?&lt;p&gt;And if trade war is the reason why deny it now? What do they have to gain from that, they&amp;#x27;re the victims in this story as far as I can tell.</text></item><item><author>hendzen</author><text>Apple and Amazon probably have a small set of TS&amp;#x2F;SCI cleared employees who dealt with this mess. It’s likely 99.99% of the employees at those firms had no idea what was going on. The switching out of thousands of compromised servers was probably made to look like routine maintenance or upgrades and the whole affair was kept secret. That is, until some high level government employees intentionally leaked it to the media, probably under direction of the White House to garner support for a more aggressive stance on China - the trade war in particular. Read between the lines.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hendzen</author><text>Those employees wouldn&amp;#x27;t be authorized to talk about the information to anyone not cleared. Which includes the PR department or anyone tasked with crafting a statement.</text></comment>