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Remember when Bloomberg ran a big hoax about China hacking every company in the USA using a tiny chip, 5 years back, and everyone swallowed it up and nothing happened to Bloomberg (hexbear.net)

submitted 10 months ago by What_Religion_R_They@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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The pile of shit itself: https://web.archive.org/web/20181009013621/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

Reddit reaction: https://www.reddit.com/r/news/duplicates/9lac9k/china_used_a_tiny_chip_in_a_hack_that_infiltrated/

(posted on reddit more than a hundred times, over 5000 comments spread out on every thread, back in 2018 this was a huge story... all bullshit)

Article detailing the aftermath: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/04/editorial-a-year-later-bloomberg-silently-stands-by-its-big-hack-icloud-spy-chip-story

It really is this transparent when we look back at it all.

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[-] Evilphd666@hexbear.net 56 points 10 months ago

Wait until they learn what Edward Snowden leaked about our own NSA.

[-] boiledfrog@hexbear.net 42 points 10 months ago

No that's different because we are the good guys so our espionage is for the sake of good things!

[-] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 24 points 10 months ago

unless it's woke espionage, then it's bad again and probably also china

[-] nat_turner_overdrive@hexbear.net 43 points 10 months ago

A friend of mine was at a technical conference and a vendor's booth had a massive Israeli flag over it. That vendor? Using another company's software to install a root kit on your servers. So basically, you pay to give Mossad a back door to all your shit.

[-] What_Religion_R_They@hexbear.net 24 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

What was their rationale for doing that? Guessing "security"?

[-] nat_turner_overdrive@hexbear.net 42 points 10 months ago

Yeah, security and management.

Imagine if a Chinese vendor had a giant Chinese flag at a conference in the US and was offering to root your shit from the other side of the planet to manage it for you. Bloomberg's staff would injure themselves trying to get to the keyboard first

[-] Tankiedesantski@hexbear.net 18 points 10 months ago

You don't want to give Mossad direct access to your systems? How anti-Semitic!

[-] IzyaKatzmann@hexbear.net 39 points 10 months ago

I want to run a bit on the hardware reddit-logo where I talk about how China is ahead of everyone in chip manufacturing and then point to this as my proof.

To the ones who might say this is fake, I'll call them tankies and ask if they think all the other stuff the US says is fake too. Like concentration camps against Muslims and Tank Man, while posting legitimate sources and denying their authenticity.

I wonder if I could get anyone contrarian enough to believe me and read the sources. Sometimes I see users comment "you didn't even read your own source" and I'm hoping some of them might. I feel the contrarianism might be stronger than their other prejudices.

Any thoughts? Besides the risk of attracting right folks.

[-] tripartitegraph@hexbear.net 23 points 10 months ago

please do this

[-] IzyaKatzmann@hexbear.net 7 points 10 months ago

inshallah-script Allah will give me strength.

[-] zephyreks@hexbear.net 16 points 10 months ago

Do it.

[-] IzyaKatzmann@hexbear.net 7 points 10 months ago

I will do my best to muster the courage.

[-] zkrzsz@hexbear.net 7 points 10 months ago

rat-salute-2

Do it comrade!

[-] kleeon@hexbear.net 5 points 10 months ago

havana syndrome death ray is also a good way to argue for chinese/russian technological superiority

[-] ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 10 months ago

If you do please make post(s) about it here with the lib's reactions.

[-] IzyaKatzmann@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago

I will do my best comrade o7

[-] What_Religion_R_They@hexbear.net 31 points 10 months ago

Of course every accusation is projection: the US forces motherboard companies to include the NSA's TPM on all boards, and CPU companies to include whatever bs management engines as well.

[-] DayOfDoom@hexbear.net 30 points 10 months ago

Hasn't Intel literally done this on all of their processors?

[-] buckykat@hexbear.net 26 points 10 months ago

Intel and AMD both. Intel calls it the Intel Management Engine, AMD calls it the Platform Security Processor.

[-] wahwahwah@hexbear.net 28 points 10 months ago

Pretty sure they just take actual cases of espionage and replace "Israel" and "America" with "CPC."

[-] What_Religion_R_They@hexbear.net 23 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Personally I love looking back at the threads and seeing commenters jump through every loophole available to justify a chip that physically could not possibly exist (or if it did exist then China is secretly 250 years ahead of the world in terms of chip manufacturing). Just one example of the gymnastics.

[-] NotErisma@hexbear.net 23 points 10 months ago

I remember when this article came out- I was working in an RMA department for a third party company that made servers for Amazon and Apple.

We specialized in the exact motherboard that this bloomberg article rattled on about. I dont know if this is worth bringing onto the table, but those units had extremely high fail rate. They either burned up or killed whatever components was installed on them (ECC Dimms were common victims). Also SuperMicro is based in San Jose and the founder is from Taiwan so...

My co-worker and I suspect this was a streisand effect to get techbros wooed into or at least talking about the OCP (Open compute project - which was a few years old, but iirc was starting to hobble financially when this article came out)

Even IF you took that tabloid at face value, wouldn't China be selecting a board that doesnt cook itself after a 40 min burn-in test?

[-] Elon_Musk@hexbear.net 15 points 10 months ago

no actually i dont remember this at all

[-] Maoo@hexbear.net 13 points 10 months ago

The adults in the room

[-] hotcouchguy@hexbear.net 8 points 10 months ago

sicko-wistful

[-] Einstein@hexbear.net 7 points 10 months ago

I cant comment on this story, but there have been instances of companies (not nations) setting up malware and spyware within the chipsets of things like android TV boxes. Sometimes the code is there to disguise lower specs and sell as higher spec online. Linus Tech Tips did a thing on it, as did a few other tech experts in the media.

Thats the issue we should be worried about. China doesnt need to hack anything in reality. We post everything online anyway.

[-] oregoncom@hexbear.net 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The actual details of this were so fucking stupid. This imbecile journalist basically asked some guy "hey theoretically could you put an IC in passive component" to some guy, that journalist took the exact part the guy used as a hypothetical, claimed china made a super secret IC that looked like a passive with no proof, then accused some random Taiwanese-American's company as compromised (with some racebaiting too, "they got hacked because they speak chinese"). No super secret microchips were ever found but that company did go bankrupt iirc. But now they've done a 180° turn and Taiwan is supposed to be on the US's side (don't ask where all the TSMC engineers are moving tho).