I personally am in agreement with the speculation that the Administration wanted to generate "outrage" against China to support the sanctions they have instituted and certain sources within the National Security echelons were tasked with spreading vague insinuations about Chinese espionage against US companies.
Can you elaborate on the specifics that Bloomberg provided? It’s been a while since I read the story but I remember feeling like it was extremely dumbed down on the technical details for the readership.I have a few problems with this theory. (1) Vague insinuations don't explain the extremely specific details and timelines that Bloomberg published. (2) Bloomberg and the administration are at odds with each other. (3) So far the National Security echelons in this administration (and in the UK too) are opposed to the story in no uncertain terms. (4) Bloomberg has in the past written articles about Apple that have been proven false or at the very least extremely overstated.
In addition, USA Today would have been a more likely news organization to push such a narrative. I wouldn’t have expected BB to get caught up in that.I have a few problems with this theory. (1) Vague insinuations don't explain the extremely specific details and timelines that Bloomberg published. (2) Bloomberg and the administration are at odds with each other. (3) So far the National Security echelons in this administration (and in the UK too) are opposed to the story in no uncertain terms. (4) Bloomberg has in the past written articles about Apple that have been proven false or at the very least extremely overstated.
If someone wrote some false things about my company, I would be suing, not asking politely for a retraction.
Why is Tim afraid to sue?
Why can’t the tantalizing story be that Bloomberg screwed up? Less fun to post about, I suppose.I personally am in agreement with the speculation that the Administration wanted to generate "outrage" against China to support the sanctions they have instituted and certain sources within the National Security echelons were tasked with spreading vague insinuations about Chinese espionage against US companies.
Bloomberg had no reason to doubt these sources, but with no solid statements to what said Chinese espionage was, they contacted various Information Security professionals, one who commented on the specific "hardware hack". Bloomberg then went back to these sources and asked if this was what they were talking about and they went "yes" even though they had no real idea - they were just pushing an agenda from on-high. So Bloomberg ran with it, presuming it to be confirmed as true when it in fact was not.
Tim doesn't even have to admit it is true - he can claim "no comment on national security grounds". He did so before about the NSA's PRISM program that Apple was required to provide iCloud-sourced information to (under legal warrant), but was prevented from commenting on by government decree.
Apple definitely have no problem suing people. Their legal team must be one of the biggest in the company...If someone wrote some false things about my company, I would be suing, not asking politely for a retraction.
Why is Tim afraid to sue?
What's fishy?
Apple definitely have no problem suing people. Their legal team must be one of the biggest in the company...
The rules are very, very different for journalists. To sue Bloomberg Apple would have to prove Bloomberg knew the story was false and published it with malice for the purpose of damaging Apple intentionally. That’s a pretty high bar. Apple knows it and so does Bloomberg. So don’t read anything into Apple not suing Bloomberg. It ain’t gonna happen.
Why don't they just have some tech guru do a tear down on one of the iPhones to see if he can truly find this "Mysterious" spying chip!? It seems if this is true, the "smoking gun" would be right there for someone to discover.
Can you elaborate on the specifics that Bloomberg provided? It’s been a while since I read the story but I remember feeling like it was extremely dumbed down on the technical details for the readership.
Hats off to you for clearly having some critical media literacy abilities. Something lacking severely in this country in regards to tech and political "journalism".You're right, I take that back.
Joe Fitzpatrick is the technical expert named in the Bloomberg article. In an interview he pointed out that Bloomberg consulted with him about how this could be done and so he speculated how he would do it. Later when the article was published, he was surprised to see that "how it happened" was exactly how he said he would have done it, to the letter. Here is a partial transcript (bold is mine):
FITZPATRICK: But what really struck me is that like all the details that were even remotely technical, seemed like they had been lifted from from the conversations I had about theoretically how hardware implants work and how the devices I was making to show off at Black Hat two years ago worked.
GRAY: So I guess what you are saying here is, the report, I mean all of the technical details of the report, you’d covered that ground with that reporter.
FITZPATRICK: Yeah, I had conversations about all the technical details and various contexts. But there are a lot of filters that happen, you know? When I explain hardware things even to software people, I don’t expect people to get it the first time and I don’t expect people to be able to describe it accurately all the time. So there is definitely a lot of telephone exchange happening
GRAY: OK but why did that make you feel uneasy? Could it be the case that you know that the technical things you told him lined up perfectly with the technical things that some of these 17 of the anonymous sources told him?
FITZPATRICK: You know, I’m just Joe. I do this stuff solo. I am building hardware implants for phones to show off at conferences. I’m not a pro at building hardware implants. I don’t work for any nation or any state building and shipping these as products. I feel like I have a good grasp at what’s possible and what’s available and how to do it just from my practice. But it was surprising to me that in a scenario where I would describe these things and then he would go and confirm these and 100 percent of what I described was confirmed by sources.
GRAY: And that’s what he was telling you through this process?
FITZPATRICK: That’s what I read in the article.
GRAY: OK, right. You find that a bit strange? That every single thing you seem to tell him, or a large proportion of what you told him, was then confirmed by his other sources.
FITZPATRICK: Yeah, basically. Either I have excellent foresight or something else is going on.
Personally, I think that Bloomberg took these three things and conflated them together into a story:
My belief is that Bloomberg applied #3's technical details to #1 and #2.
- Apple replaced SuperMicro servers. Apple confirmed this but said it was due to driver problems.
- Apple found a single SuperMicro server that had been compromised, but this was in an isolated lab during their normal testing, and it was compromised in a different way. (Firmware if I recall correctly, not hardware.)
- Joe Fitzpatrick told how a hardware hack could be done in theory.
Two scenarios here.What's fishy?
Do they have a tech background? Are they someone who will know (not secondhand account) that it’s not just putting some random chip.. but something that requires power, clock and very likely a host of connections with this “chip”?This is getting a little bit weird. For Tim to call for a retraction suggests the article must have hit on a core value of the company.
I would guess it has to do with customer privacy and customer trust, where if Apple was the victim of a malicious actor like this and then covered it up, customer data could have been stolen without acknowledgment.
That Bloomberg refuses to stand down is a pretty serious statement from that news organization. I’ve worked with their reporters before and they are professionals.
So I am surprised by this situation where Apple has ratchets it up as far as it can go and Bloomberg has not backed down or released additional information to support the claim.
Very strange situation.
It has been suggested that this story might have been planted (by the current U.S. administration) as one tool to fight China's importance in the whole computing industry.This is getting a little bit weird. For Tim to call for a retraction suggests the article must have hit on a core value of the company.
I would guess it has to do with customer privacy and customer trust, where if Apple was the victim of a malicious actor like this and then covered it up, customer data could have been stolen without acknowledgment.
That Bloomberg refuses to stand down is a pretty serious statement from that news organization. I’ve worked with their reporters before and they are professionals.
So I am surprised by this situation where Apple has ratchets it up as far as it can go and Bloomberg has not backed down or released additional information to support the claim.
Very strange situation.
Personally, I think that Bloomberg took these three things and conflated them together into a story:
My belief is that Bloomberg applied #3's technical details to #1 and #2.
- Apple replaced SuperMicro servers. Apple confirmed this but said it was due to driver problems.
- Apple found a single SuperMicro server that had been compromised, but this was in an isolated lab during their normal testing, and it was compromised in a different way. (Firmware if I recall correctly, not hardware.)
- Joe Fitzpatrick told how a hardware hack could be done in theory.
Bloomberg doesn't make computers nor smartphones. Why would Apple care if Bloomberg gets to see some internal documents.