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Amazon Has Pulled Ads From Bloomberg Over Controversial 'Big Hack' Chinese Spy Story; Apple Has Not Invited Outlet's Reporters To a Product Event Next Week (buzzfeednews.com) 119

Posted by msmash from the no-hard-feelings dept.
Both Amazon and Apple are taking retributive measures against Bloomberg, which in a report earlier this month alleged that some motherboards used by these companies were hacked by China. From a report: Amazon pulled its fourth quarter advertisements on Bloomberg's website, a move some within the media giant think is retribution for its controversial story alleging that Chinese spies hacked into the online retailer's servers. According to a source in position to know, Amazon's digital media buyer, Initiative, informed Bloomberg's sales staff on October 16 that it would cancel its ad buys for the fourth quarter due to budget cuts. Internally, the source said, the staff received that decision, made only eight days after a previous communication with Initiative confirming that the ads would run, as a direct response to Amazon's displeasure over the October 4 story. (Amazon announced Thursday that its marketing expenses for Q3 2018 were 3.3 billion dollars, up more than 800 million dollars from the year before.) [...] According to multiple sources, Bloomberg was not invited to Apple's fall product event next week in Brooklyn. Further reading: In an Unprecedented Move, Apple CEO Tim Cook Calls For Bloomberg To Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story.
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Amazon Has Pulled Ads From Bloomberg Over Controversial 'Big Hack' Chinese Spy Story; Apple Has Not Invited Outlet's Reporters T More

Amazon Has Pulled Ads From Bloomberg Over Controversial 'Big Hack' Chinese Spy Story; Apple Has Not Invited Outlet's Reporters T

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  • But no lawsuit.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 26, 2018 @01:22PM (#57540887)

    They don't want to go through discovery, they just want to bury the news.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They don't want to go through discovery, they just want to bury the news.

      You mean bullshit; because the entire article was bullshit.

      It reeks of a hatchet job planted by Trump's camp followers going after "Leftist Apple" and the "Chinese".

    • Re:But no lawsuit.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Friday October 26, 2018 @01:38PM (#57541003)
      It would be difficult to actually succeed with a lawsuit, as they would first have to demonstrate that they've suffered some material harm from this. Realistically, if anyone had a chance of doing that, it would be Super Micro as opposed to Apple or Amazon. Neither Apple or Amazon have seen their stock fluctuate wildly enough that it would be easy to point to this story as the only (or even primary) cause. Super Micro on the other hand had their price drop to about half of what it was prior to the announcement.

      I think companies are also a little reluctant to sue mainstream press, even when they think they've been hit with a hatchet job. Like any group, the press don't like attacks against their own from outside. They might call each other left/right wing mouthpieces, but they'll put that aside if anyone starts going after the freedom of the press as a whole. A big company is better off just dragging the news agencies name through the mud. The competing news agencies won't mind too much (or might even join in) and a lawsuit is going to be difficult to win and cost the company more than they get.

      • It would be difficult to actually succeed with a lawsuit, as they would first have to demonstrate that they've suffered some material harm from this. Realistically, if anyone had a chance of doing that, it would be Super Micro as opposed to Apple or Amazon. Neither Apple or Amazon have seen their stock fluctuate wildly enough that it would be easy to point to this story as the only (or even primary) cause. Super Micro on the other hand had their price drop to about half of what it was prior to the announcement.

        I think companies are also a little reluctant to sue mainstream press, even when they think they've been hit with a hatchet job. Like any group, the press don't like attacks against their own from outside. They might call each other left/right wing mouthpieces, but they'll put that aside if anyone starts going after the freedom of the press as a whole. A big company is better off just dragging the news agencies name through the mud. The competing news agencies won't mind too much (or might even join in) and a lawsuit is going to be difficult to win and cost the company more than they get.

        That's a perfect, and reasonable, explanation.

        Thanks!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Well personally I don't see legitimate libel or slander suits against press organizations as limiting press freedoms; at least not in the US - where proving the statement is true is a sufficient defense of either of those civil actions.

        I also think the media gets a pass on using weasel words like "alleged", and "claims" etc. I am fine with it as long as they name their sources - tell me who claims or who alleges blah blah put a spy chip on the motherboards or he sexually assaulted her or whatever. We can

        • Demanding reporters name anonymous sources so that they can have their lives ruined is about the stupidest thing you could possibly come up with to say about the situation, regardless of what you think really happened.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            No I am not saying they have to name their anonymous sources. I am saying they either take responsibility for the information being factual or don't report it. Named sources are responsible for their statements antonymous sources; are not news worthy unless the can be corroborated.

            An anonymous source says such and such and da da duh happened -> NOT NEWS

            This reporter learned from an anonymous source that blah blah may have happened, after investigating the matter $NEWSORG found the following evidence to

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        a lawsuit is going to be difficult to win and cost the company more than they get.

        Uhm... Apple/Amazon don't care about that. Their brand is everything to them, and if they have/had acase: I'm sure their lawyers would be all over it.

        Bloomberg's story might not be 100% accurate, but there's probably some truth to it that these companies NEED to hide that would come out in the lawsuit which would could damage their bottom line ---- better to keep it quiet and cast as much doubt as possible.

        Also; I'm

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Which is interesting. Other buried bodies they want to keep hidden or is there actually some truth to the story? Technologically, the attack would be possible. I could do this myself, except for the miniaturization and hiding in a signal-filter. (A signal-filter has no business being in an SPI-connection, BTW.)

      The only thing that did not make sense to me was the claim that the attack-devices in later cases were hidden inside the PCB. That makes no sense at all as it is easier to detect (X-Rays, maybe even s

      • Hidden inside the motherboard, or inside an ethernet socket on the motherboard?

        If really inside, yeah, that is not a big deal to achieve. Remember, without all the plastic and the leads most microcontrollers would fit on a pinhead. It would be no big deal to slap an unpackaged micro with only bond wires stuck between two comm pads. No need to worry about altering the flash or whatever, you're not fiddling with the CPU; you're just monitoring network data and sometimes inserting packets. If you also have the

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          The claim was inside the PCB. The Ethernet socket lacks the connections for this attack. You can do others via the Ethernet socket though, especially if the ever-vulnerable Intel remote management engine is present. Still can be found easily via industrial x-ray. Nobody has that at home, but students, for example, may be able to access one at their university.

  • 100% of their hardware is compromised. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You must be a complete cretin to still not realize this. 100% of all consumer-available computers are fully backdoored. Get it through your thick skulls already.

    • [citation needed]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      No, it is not. First, there is no sane reason to do it, as it is not needed for anything. You are not that important and what you do on your computer is not either. Second, the more hardware backdoors you deploy, the higher the risk somebody finds them. And third, actually using a backdoor always comes with a significant detection risk as well. And last, NOBUS backdoors are very, very hard to get right and anything else can be found and used by other attackers. That would be an extreme catastrophe and is j

  • I knew they had featured products and the like, but I didn't remember Amazon having ad ads. Maybe that is for non-Prime members (not virtue signaling, I swear, though perhaps that would really be more vice-signaling).

  • It's the only way to hold so-called news reporters to any sort of standard.

    Why should Apple or Amazon continue to deal with Bloomberg when Apple and Amazon think they've been the victim of false reporting?

  • This story was reported widely in Feb of 2017 (Score:5, Informative)

    by supercell ( 1148577 ) on Friday October 26, 2018 @01:49PM (#57541085)
    This Supermicro server/security story was reported in 2017, although focused on Apple (said others were impacted, no specific mention of Amazon), since it was not highly profiled by Bloomberg Business News, it was not widely noticed.

    Feb 2017
    https://appleinsider.com/artic... [appleinsider.com]
    https://www.macrumors.com/2017... [macrumors.com]
    https://arstechnica.com/civis/... [arstechnica.com]

    Their claims that they knew nothing of this security issue from Supermicro has all the appererances of a PR cover up

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Bad firmware != deliberately vulnerable hardware.

    • More recent research (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday October 26, 2018 @02:11PM (#57541207)

      The thing is, just recently LOTS of news orgs, and the government itself could find no evidence of what was reported - and both Apple and Amazon did not just give PR responses, but much stronger responses that would lead to large fines if they were lying.

      Since everyone else on Earth is unable to verify the story, it's far more likely Bloomburg really screwed up.

      • There was no attempt at that time to refute the stories by Apple and others at that time. Only when it reached critical mass, (Bloomberg, ran a huge piece on it, did they react).

        If they had reacted to a few blogs post/Tech articles in 2017 they would have had the Streisand Effect [wikipedia.org] on the matter.

        Supermico announced in early 2017 that it lost TWO large data-center customers in 2016 over security issues. Apple being one, Amazon probably being the other. Their stock took a huge hit in early 2017 when thei

        • Those are totally separate issues though. One was companies leaving Supermicro because they sucked, which is a far different matter than Chinese spy-grains being embedded on motherboards (which again exactly ZERO people can produce physical evidence of).

        • There was no attempt at that time to refute the stories by Apple and others at that time.

          You're confusing two different incidents. The reason there wasn't an attempt to refute the 2016 firmware incident you're talking about is because it actually happened. Apple has even talked about it publicly. From Apple's response to Bloomberg [bloomberg.com]:

          We are deeply disappointed that in their dealings with us, Bloomberg’s reporters have not been open to the possibility that they or their sources might be wrong or misinformed. Our best guess is that they are confusing their story with a previously-reported 2016 incident in which we discovered an infected driver on a single Super Micro server in one of our labs. That one-time event was determined to be accidental and not a targeted attack against Apple.

          The 2016 firmware incident in which a single SuperMicro server in a test environment received a malware update is real. The 2015 hardware incident alleged by Bloomberg—in which a malicious chip was physically placed on the boards—has zero factual basis as

      • The thing is, just recently LOTS of news orgs, and the government itself could find no evidence of what was reported - and both Apple and Amazon did not just give PR responses, but much stronger responses that would lead to large fines if they were lying.

        Since everyone else on Earth is unable to verify the story, it's far more likely Bloomburg really screwed up.

        Would Apple and Amazon be subjected to large fines if they were blatantly lying? Under what law? The SEC and stockholders/lawyers would only go after them if the stock price had been affected, and even in those cases, the fines are less than wrist-slaps. There is basically little real penalty for Apple and Amazon to vociferously deny everything. On the other hand, a less than full denial could result in a PR hit.

        It's possible that Bloomberg reporters totally made up the story or substantially modified t

    • Re:This story was reported widely in Feb of 2017 (Score:5, Informative)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Friday October 26, 2018 @02:43PM (#57541447)

      No, *that* was a problem of failing to provide adequate protection of their servers and download site from fake firmware. From all reports, this was enough to scare Apple off as a customer, but didn't actually get anywhere to have a chance to actually infiltrate anything. This is a class of attack that can be mitigated, and it is correct to select a different vendor for having better security practices to prevent an external attacker that has no business relationship with the supplier from getting in.

      Bloomberg's accusation is that there was a *hardware* attack where a chip was injected and that the attack actually landed and spent a significant time having compromised the datacenters.

      This is a whole different implication:
      -An entity with a business relationship vetted by the supplier would have been the one to execute, suggesting the supplier is at best inadequate in vetting their partners and at worst (and the bloomberg *heavily* hints it this in mildly racist ways) complicit in the attack.
      -Such an attack landed successfully for a significant duration.

      As a few have pointed out, the far safer bet would be a firmware attack, as with the alleged approach it would be far more expensive, less likely to hit, and upon detection has no plausible deniability. The artcile smells fishy, and no other investigation can find a hint of anything to corroborate the claims.

    • Re:This story was reported widely in Feb of 2017 (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Friday October 26, 2018 @03:30PM (#57541841)

      The issue you're talking about is an unrelated incident dealing with firmware, NOT the hardware issue that Bloomberg is reporting.

      The firmware incident from 2016 that you're talking about is indeed what led Apple to dump SuperMicro. That said, Apple has been open about that incident and even mentioned it explicitly in their initial response to Bloomberg's article, suggesting that—as you just did—Bloomberg confused the 2016 situation with the hardware incident alleged by Bloomberg. I would have hoped you'd have known better, since I already told you all of this [slashdot.org] just a few weeks ago.

      As for what the firmware incident involved, in short, SuperMicro let a board get by them that had malware on it. As far as Apple could tell, it was an incidental infection that wasn't targeted at them in any way, but it pointed to such a lapse in SuperMicro's QA process that SuperMicro could no longer be trusted as a supplier. Again, that's a separate issue from Bloomberg's claims that there were malicious chips physically placed on boards back in 2015.

    • https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2018/10/05/making-sense-of-the-supermicro-motherboard-attack/

      "Perhaps the animation is an artist’s concept only, but this is just the right place to compromise the BMC.

      That's the Security Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, and they take no prisoners (;-))

  • Happens all the time (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mschuyler ( 197441 ) on Friday October 26, 2018 @02:07PM (#57541185) Homepage Journal

    Neither Apple nor Amazon owe Bloomberg or anyone else ads. When an advertiser pulls ads from someone like Sean Hannity or Rosie in a blatant attempt to hurt those outlets, everyone here cheers. But Apple pulls ads from Bloomberg and the cries of unfairness are loud. Some people here will "never buy Apple" because, you know, Chinese slave labor and all that. You get to do that. You have that right. You get to make a political decision about where you spend your money. So do Apple and Amazon. It's nothing more complicated than that.

  • Show me the data (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 26, 2018 @02:18PM (#57541257)

    If SuperMicro is guilty of this, then all Bloomberg has to do is go online, but some boards and pay MIT or some other school with the facilities to find the malicious chips. That seems pretty logical right?

    If the chips actually exist, they should be pretty easy to identify. Just cross reference the chips and the drivers and verify what is OEM, Chinese or otherwise and then reverse engineer them and simulate the hack.

    This is not a difficult thing to do.

    I know of a NATO government organization that has pulled the power from a stack of Nutanix servers because of this article. I asked them to prove to me that the story had any merit other than FUD and they explained that they pulled the plug because they need proof there is no merit not the other way around.

    I think SuperMicro should sue the shit out of Bloomberg over this. So should Nutanix and every other company financially effected by this article. Then Bloomberg will be forced to either prove their claims ... at which point we can all apologize and thank them or they can suffer the hundreds of millions in losses over publishing this rubbish.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Lets assume the story is true. It is quite possible Bloomberg does not have the hardware and the witnesses may not be able to get to any either at this time. Of course, the story could also be false, but this is not the way to show that.

    • Why do it now? When they've got the affected companies going apeshit and making these kinds of insanely-strong statements about how they insist on the right of rich assholes to magically prove a negative through command voice, they might as well wait until it dies down a little, then dump the evidence on them. Right now it is still churning under its own power, why would they possibly want to shorten the time frame that it plays out over?!

      Nobody is suing anybody, because discovery. They all know supermicro

  • Conspiracy theory time? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <`gameboyrmh' `at' `gmail.com'> on Friday October 26, 2018 @03:02PM (#57541619) Journal

    I'd guess that the story is true and the affected megacorps are trying to cover it up. I'd guess that these megacorps are cooperating with the TLAs investigating the issue, and don't want the story made public because they'd rather not go public about a data breach (at least not individually and earlier than necessary), which the TLAs would also prefer in this case. So the media would be both compromising the investigation and bringing bad PR to the victims by reporting on this.

    In a couple years we'll probably hear that it was all true and the affected companies will jointly disclose the data breach.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Possibly. There would be very strong economic incentives to lie, as such a backdoor would basically compromise anything "cloud", and may cost them hundreds of billions. That is not small money and may pose an existential risk. Of course, it is also possible the story is false.

      I fear that at this time there is no way to really find out. If true, the compromised hardware will already have been removed and destroyed very quietly. If false, how do you prove that?

      The one thing I can say is that the attack would

    • I'd guess that the story is true and the affected megacorps are trying to cover it up.

      It seems that Apple learned about the story from the newspaper, then asked the relevant employees "did you find anything and contact the FBI", then asked the FBI "did any of our employees contact you", and the FBI knew nothing, and the employees knew nothing. "Trying to cover it up" is a bit ridiculous when Bloomberg could just release the evidence (which they probably don't have).

  • Age of paranoia (Score:3)

    by Headw1nd ( 829599 ) on Friday October 26, 2018 @04:49PM (#57542323)
    So while reading the "comments" where it seems everyone is accusing everyone else of being a shill, I couldn't help but thinking any number of them could actually be from Chinese or Russians, working against each other to either discredit the story or hype it up. As an American it seems strange to live in a world where everything around you has the potential to be tainted by foreign psyops, I imagine this must be a little bit like the third world felt during the cold war.

    • I'm not sure, your account is pretty new, you might be a furren infill traitor, here to insert manimal propaganda.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SEE ( 7681 )

      Don't trust anyone over a four-digit ID.

    • It all started after the election, they had to delegitimize Trump somehow. Easy, accuse him of being a dirty foreigner. McCarthyism. It worked shockingly well, people were grabbing at straws to find a reason why he won. The idea that the they had deliberately fucked over the American working class and that this was a reaction to that was too painful to acknowledge. What, admit the deplorables had a point? Entire political systems have fallen rather than admit less.
  • Capitalist contact with the vast Chinese market leads to sensitivity to communist Chinese government pressures. I believe these actions are the result of pressure directly or indirectly by the Chinese government. We can expect to see more and more of this shaping of our system by the Chinese and amoral/immoral bussiness leaders greedy for Chinese business.

  • If it wasn't true, they wouldn't be overreacting so much.

  • Sounds like pissy little babies run those companies. Is this the world we want?

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