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Comment by nil_pointer | Hacker News Reader

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If that's the only question then the answer for every major company is "guilty". I don't think doing business in china means that Bloomberg gets to make up a bunch of BS from mysterious anonymous sources without a single piece of physical evidence, wiping out billions in market value, and just call it a day and we're all supposed to believe it because they use the word "China". I think we can probably hold them, and ourselves, to a higher standard of journalism. Though, clearly there is a huge market for China-hating technopanic, no matter how little evidence or credibility there may be, since some people will literally believe anything if they think it's done in China.

It isn't really plausible that Bloomberg made up the story. They had to have a high degree of confidence to publish it. The question we all need to be asking is why they had that high degree of confidence. Where their information came from and whether or not those sources had ulterior motives to lead Bloomberg astray.

I have to imagine Bloomberg is also trying to find out why their story has not matched statements by the companies alleged to be involved so starkly. There is a story here, but what that story actually is is definitely in question.

I totally agree, I think they cobbled together bits and pieces and kind of put it together based on what they could find. The one guy they interviewed who is willing to talk said explicitly that this is what happened to him: https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/09/bloomberg/

Yeah, my hunch (like yours) is that everyone involved--Bloomberg, Apple, AWS--believes, in good faith, in what they have stated, and have collected more than enough evidence to back those statements. Since there's a contradiction, the truth is probably fairly weird, if it's enough to provide so much conflicting evidence both ways.

The least weird conclusion is that Bloomberg connected too many dots the wrong way around and are embarrassed to admit it.

It's not clear how much oversight Bloomberg has over the detailed process that the journalists used to get their information, aside from what they presented to Bloomberg. Based on accounts from some people they talked to, it sounds like the journalists involved are conspiracy-types who will take any bit of speculative information and run with it.

For a good example of how reporters can be mislead, or can mislead themselves by buying too heavily into a narrative, and not examining alternatives with enough scrutiny, read about the Killian Documents Controversy (about George W Bush's military service, reported by Dan Rather 60 Minutes); or read about "A Rape On Campus" (the Rolling Stone article that was retracted in its entirety):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus

In both cases, it seemed to me that the reporters involved crafted a story in their heads about what happened, and then only sought information that confirmed their story while ignoring information that contradicted it. The Duke Lacrosse case is an example of the same thing happening in a criminal prosecution:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case

Another theme that I've seen is experts giving an interview about some very specific/narrow topic, which is then spun, taken out of context, or generally misquoted by reporters and presented as something different. This happened with document verification in the Killian controversy, and also seems to have happened with this Bloomberg story, according to another comment in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18278023 . In the Killian case, document examiners explicitly told CBS that they were relying on poor material that could not be authenticated (see Wikipedia section "Response of the document examiners"), but CBS went ahead and characterized the documents as having been authenticated by experts.

> Though, clearly there is a huge market for China-hating technopanic, no matter how little evidence or credibility there may be, since some people will literally believe anything if they think it's done in China.

China has only itself to blame for this.

If you threaten the nuclear option over an airline listing Taiwan as a country on their US website, what will people expect from you over an issue that could cost you billions in business?

It opens them up to exactly this kind of story, because it gives people reason to expect coerced speech. The price of censorship and coercion is a complete loss of credibility. Which means the debate continues over a story where the denials could otherwise have put the matter to rest already.

What bothers me is that we have no proof and everything is vague. The motherboard needs to account for the chip at the PCB traces level to work right? Did anybody saw a weird 6 traces converging at a point for no reason on all the motherboards on the market? What is the exact model? Which bus it is fed from? Give me the name of the bus instead of vague journalistic stuff! Send pictures, output captures, anything.

> Did anybody saw a weird 6 traces converging at a point for no reason on all the motherboards on the market?

You do ask some good questions, but if apple can dropship my one macbook pro from China when I order it, I suspect they could dropship 1 (or many) of these boards to Apple, Amazon, etc when ordered. In other words, they wouldn't have to produce all of them with this special chip. Hell, they might only need to send one to each customer to infiltrate their network. If Apple ordered thousands of these, I doubt they would xray each one (assuming they're multi-layered boards).

You seem to forget how difficult it is to manufacture a single unit of a mother board to achieve the effect you're imagining. Do you really think they have a production line where every week or so they create a different mother board adding this circuit? Why in the world would they create these additional costs, and is it even economically justifiable? This whole story seems each day worse, just like believing in Big Foot.

The whole point of inserting malicious hardware for shadowy intelligence-related reasons is that you do it either out of government coercion or via government funding.

I don't know why it's so implausible that Chinese intelligence is using the Chinese tech industry to carry out their operations when American intelligence uses the American tech industry to carry out their operations. Nobody said PRISM was fake news because why would Apple and Google and Facebook invest in it; the actual investment came from NSA and the cooperation of these companies is via top secret FISA warrants. China doesn't even need to maintain the pretense of legality that the NSA does.

Again, I don't think the Bloomberg story by itself is credible anymore, but I also don't think it's as implausible as you are making it sound.

If the board house has copies of the gerbers, which they should, someone could easily edit those to introduce a spot for the implant. And if they already have all of the drawings, they can just add those empty pads into the design so any inspection wouldn't raise alarm. Then install the actual implant post-inspection. Maybe they get lucky by just re-purposing unused pads from the original design and route the traces to where ever.

> Do you really think they have a production line where every week or so they create a different mother board adding this circuit?

No, I do not think that. I assume they hand modify a few boards at a time, just like the NSA.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

Modifying every single board would violate one of the tenants of spying... it would make it much more likely for the implant to be detected.

The device in the photographs is essentially a fancy multi-layer ceramic cap. It can't contain a silicon die without a manufactured cavity and a lid. There is no way to do that in such a small package.

This seemingly trenchant observation ignores how much AWS (and Apple) have to lose in all their markets if it turns out they are insistently, loudly, publicly lying to everyone, including their shareholders and congress.

Hardware hacks have physical evidence. Where is the evidence for this story?

Are you suggesting both apple and amazon are covering up the truth?

Not just covering up the truth. Doing so knowing that getting caught would open them up to a huge public backlash and possibly legal culpability, even though if Bloomberg is correct about 30 companies are affected, the government knows all abou it, and dozens of Apple, AWS and other insiders and experts are actively talking to Bloomberg and sharing details left right and centre already.

How does anybody think Apple and AWS would calculate they could get away with lying like this, when Bloomberg says it’s already widely known and widely being leaked? So where are all these insiders that are blabbing? How come they’re not talking to any other journalists? What about the security experts Bloomberg says are also in on it and willing to talk?

If Bloomberg is right, this story should be wide open by now. Instead ....nothing. Not a single scrap of corroborating evidence for this supposedly widely known and broadly leaked issue.

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