Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by Ironlink | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Ironlink·

The article says:

> The company gained unauthorized access to the heart of the mobile network from China.

... but then, in the very next sentence:

> How often that happened is not clear because it was not recorded anywhere.

This wording is a bit unclear. The first sentence states as a matter of fact that there was unauthorized access, while the second states that there are no records.

View on HN

I read it as meaning they had access (i.e. they could access it), but we don't know if they did access it.

You'd be better advised to read it as: journalists have no idea what they're describing, and mash together words without nuanced regard to what the facts may be.

c.f. the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

"The company" could refer to either Huawei or Capgemeni in that sentence, and Capgemeni makes the most sense given the following sentence.

That is not conflicting. "did they" and "how often" are two different questions. Metadata can and often does indicate the fact that something was accessed but not how often. For example, the "last modified" user/timestamp on a file.

It might mean not officially recorded anywhere, like an intelligence agency gave them a heads up about it, but the network admins at the company didn't see anything with their monitoring software.

Or the admins saw it once and then revoked privileges - you know it happened at least once and probably more, but you don't know how many more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com