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Comment by mehrdadn | Hacker News Reader

I'm probably wrong, but for the life of me I can't help but wonder if there's weasel-wording going on.

Bloomberg:

> Three senior insiders at Apple say that in the summer of 2015, it, too, found malicious chips on Supermicro motherboards.

Apple:

> Apple has never found malicious chips, “hardware manipulations” or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server.

Why did they say "purposely planted" here? Were they trying to exclude the possibility of malicious chips being accidentally planted in any server? Is that even a thing? If so, why? If not, then why include those qualifiers if they are unnecessary?

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Saying "vulnerabilities purposely planted" just means that their servers may have had bugs like heartbleed in the past.

Thanks, that makes sense for vulnerabilities. But what about "malicious chips"? I have such a hard time ignoring the fact that it modifies that phrase too. Should I be?

It "modifies that phrase too", in what sense? Ostensibly the only way an unknown chip could be introduced into a data-center in such a way, and of all of them Apple's, would be with malicious intent, surely?

I don't think "malicious chips" was a quote from Apple - Apple's letter mentioned "the existence of malware or other malicious activity." adding "Nothing was ever found." - which is pretty broad.

Every webstory is quoting that same excerpt - if the entire letter was printed somewhere, I can't find it.

Apple statement is available here: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/10/what-businessweek-got...

Thanks for pointing this out! Yeah, that is pretty broad.

Supermicro BMCs had security vulnerabilities in the past as well -- which were presumably not purposefully planted.

People are – I think – getting too hung up on possible "weasel words" in Apple's and Amazon's denials. Think about it for a moment: What good would it do Apple if it turned out that Bloomberg was essentially correct in their reporting, that Apple knew this, but that Apple had worded their denial carefully such that it could be argued that it was not technically untrue by some very narrow and literal reading of it? Would shareholders and the public forgive Apple if that were the case? Would trust in Apple stay intact? Would a judge rule in favour of Apple in case of a law suit? If the answer to all of these questions is no, the consequences for Apple would be the same as if they had lied.

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