Supermicro: research does not reveal malicious chips on its motherboards
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Fox2232
I do, more than probably. Assassination attempts should be remembered.
fantaskarsef
On one hand, the ones who believed it was true in the first place will still not believe any report on not finding any chips. On the other, the ones saying that this was plausible but without any proof might be still right.
I wonder if Bloomberg's already telling their legal department they'll have to work overtime. Lots of stock value lost due to a report that still has no factual evidence for any claims. Would love to see Bloomberg trying to get out of this one.
Reardan
If you wanted to do this at scale, you wouldn't put an obvious device on the motherboard. You'd hide it in firmware.
tailspin
#fakenews strikes again. Does supermicro get to sue Bloomberg for loss of sales and reputation damage ?
nosirrahx
Integrating a new chip into a motherboard covertly was kind of a ridiculous claim.
Adding the traces alone to a motherboard would be a giant PITA.
It would have been more plausible to compromise something like the actual ethernet connector.
Also this.
vbetts
Moderator
Bloomberg, that clickbait though.
Picolete
Someone is gonna lose a lot of money
JamesSneed
This adding a chip to the motherboard crap never made any sense at all. Unless you are at the plant making the board it is near impossible to do this type of mod especially with it going unnoticed. I would have been more inclined to believe hacked/modified Realtek audio firmware or Ethernet firmware than this nonsense.
Fox2232
Bloomberg made a lot of money on it. Or at least people who made that article and anyone involved who decided to go through it.
Every time you create panic, you know that there will be consequence.
schmidtbag
Although I didn't trust Bloomberg's report from the very beginning, I'm not exactly quick to trust the manufacturer from saying there's no malicious chips either. So long as nobody has the means to really prove them wrong, they can really claim whatever they want and we kinda just have to take their word for it. However, considering many of Supermicro's customers also seemed to suggest there was never an issue to begin with, I'm inclined to believe it is Bloomberg who is wrong.
Assuming Bloomberg is wrong, I sure hope they get sued hard for defamation.
Monchis
The burden of proof is on the people making the claim on the first place, but fake news journalists (and the people that manipulates them) know that even without evidence half of the audience will believe them straight away, while another considerable portion will be undecided. There is a moral/philosophical obligation to it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)
FM57
ah crap, I was just starting to learn Chinese. I thought my SuperMicro motherboard would be used as the new Skype.
H83
Wouldn´t be better and easier to use routers for spying or is this a stupid idea?
WareTernal
I didn't see any claim of adding traces. Any suggestion like that was probably some uninformed journalist. As you say, it doesn't make sense. More likely a compromised component(like the network interface controller chip) would be used in place of the proper one. You probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference without an electron microscope.
fry178
They state they havent found any chips, how about the ones they gave permission to be installed? 🙄
Anyone that doesnt have ANY "spying" chips on their hardware would say so,
and not just state they didnt find any "unauthorized" ones, as that implies there are (one/more)..
Astyanax
This was a government hit job to hurt chinese trade.
Size_Mick
What I'd like them to do now is follow up with an article about how this happened -- and disclose their sources. After taking a pretty aggressive stance on the matter, I feel it's the absolute least they can do. Those who cry "fake news" have probably themselves been hypnotized by fake news for the last 20 years by a certain news corporation that won't be named. Bloomberg has a solid reputation, so I'm still willing to give them the benefit of the doubt -- provided they explain what the hell happened and disclose their source.
fantaskarsef
Logically, it does not say there are permitted chips on it. It just doesn't say there aren't. 😉
They won't disclose their "sources" (which obviously are crap anyway). They simply can't, for either they will give away "sensitive" information about who makes such claims, which the people behind any such news wouldn't want (or they'd have shown their faces in the first place already). Or, on the other hand, they will simply say they can't because of "national security" or something similar, meaning it all was politically motivated.
I honestly think they won't have the balls to give any real valuable information or feedback on this, they'll probably just try to sit it out.
Koniakki
Even if they were any malicious/compromised chips onboard, one could safely assume that the party responsible, would immediately cease operations and most probably even remote wipe etc, when or even before the story went public.
*oops, my tinfoil hat was on again. Damn thing.. 😛
gx-x
What a shocker. I wonder who bought stock after the initial news and stock fall. I also wonder why that person will not go to jail this time either.
