October 21, 2018
Follow-Up on that Hardware Hacking Story
A few weeks ago we noted that Bloomberg had broken a HUGE news story that involved China inserting small chips onto mother boards that were intended to allow back door access to ALL THE HARDWARE.
A week or so later we noted that sourcing was rather....thin, and that no rice grain sized chips had been produced.
Now it appears that Apple (who has vociferously denied it all along) is demanding a retraction and apology from Bloomberg.
As Pixy noted in the comments to our first post on the matter, one of the reporters involved has a rather chequered history with computer spying stories.
To Wit:
one of the reporters on the Bloomberg story -- Michael Riley -- had also done a story back in 2014 making bold claims that the NSA had exploited the Heartbleed bug, and multiple other reports ripped that story to shreds, with multiple people denying it and no one else confirming it.
That TECHDIRT story goes on to suggest that Bloomberg has whittled away their credibility on this and "set fire to the scraps".
For example people quoted in the original story are strongly contradicting it.
All of Bloomberg's sources on this are and remain anonymous. So as of now, the story seems to be a dumpster fire, that still hasn't produced any spy chips or any evidence whatsoever.
None of this is to suggest that its a good idea to be subcontracting our most vital components to overseas slaves whose masters hate our guts, or that this isn't an obvious and even likely threat. However, IF this story is in fact bunk, (as now seems likely) the "Cry Wolf Effect" will make it harder to prepare for such matters. Furthermore if this is bunk then those of us who reported it credulously will find it harder to be believed when it does come to pass.
If I were the CCP, that would suit me just fine.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
02:03 AM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 327 words, total size 3 kb.
30kb generated in CPU 0.015, elapsed 0.092 seconds.
71 queries taking 0.0822 seconds, 270 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
71 queries taking 0.0822 seconds, 270 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
