Unreleased MacBook Schematics Stolen in $50M Ransomware Attack on Apple Supplier
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
If they pay the ransom, it sends a message to everyone with access to confidential Apple manufacturing materials that they are sitting on millions of dollars of ransom material.
I would guess that Apple will refuse to engage in order to avoid incentivizing everyone in their manufacturing chain from trying the same stunt. Instead, they’ll go to great lengths to investigate the leak and punish the manufacturer responsible for leaking the material.
Schematics don’t hold much an exceptionally high value given that they could be reverse engineered from the product by sufficiently funded individuals. However, it would represent a leak of the details of upcoming products which is something Apple goes to great lengths to avoid.
The article says, "the group is demanding that Apple pay an undisclosed ransom for the images/schematics they obtained via the supplier by May 1 [...] Until then, the hackers will continue to post new files every day, REvil said on its blog."
The target is only Apple itself, the random group does not accept third-party payment and will make all information public if it's not payed. So I don't think the group wants to sell the information to accessory manufacturers or Apple news sites.
That wouldn't be a viable business model for the ransom group; Any accessory manufacturer or news site would likely get in a legal entanglement for buying trade secrets.
Because they're so ethical? If a third party wanted to pay them $50M or even remotely close to that, they'd accept in 0 seconds.
If the information of the new product provides consumers even a reason to wait that could cost Apple dearly, this is why they are notoriously secretive.
Most customers are not even aware of possible model changes when they purchase. A reasonably technically adept friend of mine just bought a new iMac the other day. When they told me, they were very happy about and and I had to avoid noticeably wincing. If I had known before the purchase i would have advised them to wait for the upcoming redesigned models with the M-series chips instead of the old stuff. I think that this is how most customers approach purchases. They don’t pay attention to rumors and news about newer products.
But I think Apple's secrecy is more about maximizing the marketing impact of announcements, and making competitors work harder to predict product directions.
Tell that to people in the market for pro-level Mac hardware.
By the way, the guy donates money to open source projects.
Netflix probably interested in his story. He is like Digital Version of Pablo Escobar.
[0] https://therecord.media/i-scrounged-through-the-trash-heaps-...
As someone who has audited Quanta in my previous jobs, I am constantly being surprised that these documents are leaked so infrequently. A "Project" in Quanta start with the customer send in their schematics and mechanical drawings to the Quanta "R&D" engineers so they could redraw it to enable production in Quanta, aka EVT; then it is DVT for multi-sourcing of components and compatibility and EMC compliance, then it is PVT. Engineers usually transform the documents to PDF files and upload to the company's document center, production line operators will download those PDF files and copy it here and there, maybe even with a USB thumb drive to copy it to a production station running Windows 98 and Adobe Reader with no network access. The factories get so many projects that the leaked document maybe is for a product that already died in EVT.
It is also amazing to me that those PDF iPhone Schematics always leak to the 3rd party repairman after sometime it is announced, apparently there is an invisible food chain. But for this one, REvil is simply trying to brand themselves instead of the ransom.
Then someone sneak the SD card or thumb drives out with the files on it.
Laptop schematics are still relatively easy to find these days, but unfortunately the search results are flooded with people trying to sell them; they used to be even more freely available several years ago. (Google tends to want to ignore the word "schematic" in a search query, unless it is in quotes. Make of that what you will...)