Apple's Former Legal Chief Bruce Sewell Says FBI 'Never Heard' of Supermicro Allegations Last Year

[SoGood]

If this turns out to be as incorrect of a story as it is appearing to be, I hope the public backlash is as bad for the journalists and Businessweek as it would be for the companies if it were reasonably accurate.

It won't. Given the partisan nature of politics in the US and the mass ignorance, this will be another contributing story that continues to elevate the China fear. To a point, it's almost akin to the Nazis in the 30s, using demonisation of the Jews for their power grab. It works and will continue to work on this weakness of human psyche.

 

[entropys]

Bloomberg is no fan of Trump, if not outright antipathetic. Stop letting the orange one rent space in your heads.

This is just some second rate journalist not wanting to drop what seemed a juicy story despite contrary information.

 

[ChrisA]

Here is my theory (guess)...

Some Chinese agency did this while the motherboards were still in China. SuperMicro knew nothin about this.

The Apple finds the problem and contacts the government and the US government counter intelligence people see this as a windfall. They can send the Chinese agent bogus information. They send made-up numbers then if ever they see those made-up numbers being used then they know who did this. It is like paying the kidnapper with "marked" bills and then waiting for the bills to be spent.

The government guys were VERY disappointed that a US news company broke this story. They wanted the Chinese to think they had not been discovered. Now all that work of sending the fake data (marked bills) is wasted.

The government guys are trying and failing badly to reduce their losses by forcing Apple, Google and everyone else to "shut up" but it's to late. The Chinese know now that all the data they got over the last 3 years is bogus and will burn their marked bills.

This is as bad as when after years of work the police are about to close in on the top mob-boss and then some news story breaks about how the cops infiltrated the mob and got some mid-level thugs. All that work is gone and they don't get the boss.

I am sure others will make different guesses but the Bloomberg story was SOLID, they had multiple sources that said that same thing and sources where both in handout of government. It was a pretty hard solid story.

 

[DanBig]

Tech has gone leaps and bounds from the first Apple II & IBM PC systems to what we have today.

Its moved so fast people often believe the unbelievable is real! A device the size of a grain of rice! That has the ability to inject its code into the logic of the server system its been placed into is just not possible!

Even the spin of all of the conjecture is unreal and every one is spinning the facts is just blowing my mind!

Bloomberg's story is fiction and the reporter did not do his homework! Talking to chip makers on what would be possible for a circuit to do this let alone the size and complexity of such a circuit. It would have been plain to the reporter we're just not at this level of miniaturization even at the experimental level.

Sure what was thought of as being fantasy a few years ago has become fact. Just look at astronomy and astrophysics who would have thought we would find planets circling other stars and even figure out their mass! Or see gravity waves using a pair of devices one based in Louisiana!

So maybe in 10 years this will be possible! It's just not today.

 

[ronntaylor]

Bloomberg is no fan of Trump, if not outright antipathetic. Stop letting the orange one rent space in your heads.

This is just some second rate journalist not wanting to drop what seemed a juicy story despite contrary information.

Just second rate? You give them too much credit. This is below third rate journalism. The editors and publisher should be ashamed of themselves for going forward with this story and especially sticking with it despite the avalanche of evidence that refutes every part of it.

 

[Abazigal]

Trump deep-state operation to make Americans more willing to accept pain from tariffs on Chinese goods?
Kushner seems a likely source for Bloomberg. Could be any of a dozen different people though.
Maybe the reporter will let us know his source.

I am starting to believe this to be the case more and more.

Someone leaked a false story to Bloomberg, who went ahead with it without properly checking their sources. The US government will then use this to justify another round of tariffs.

It’s the Judith Miller reporting of the iraq war at New York Times fiasco all over again.

 

[Partron22]

A device with 6 pins/pads, 2 for power, seems poorly suited to gain control of a 64 bit parallel data bus.
Bloomberg's article was written for dummies, and does not reliably source anything. It's not even clear that the object they show is the culprit, rather than a stock pic. A few of the pix only show 3 pins or pads and are clearly a different shape than the 6 pin/pad version. Which is it? Things seem deliberately nebulous here. Snookering is a definite possibility.

 

[ChrisA]

Bloomberg's story is fiction and the reporter did not do his homework! Talking to chip makers on what would be possible for a circuit to do this let alone the size and complexity of such a circuit.

What if the chip is an 8K EEPROM that took the place of some other EEPROM. SO the Plant is just to cut a trace with a tiny drill then solder your memory in place of an existing memory chip. That is not very complex just a simple swap.

It is very common now to use memory with a serial or "I2C interface because it uses very few PCB traces. Having few traces make the swap simple

Here is an 8K EEPROM that you can order today http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/21710K.pdf
it costs 25 cents for one unit.

Look at the SIZE. if you order the "CS" package the chip in less than 1 millimeter square. A grain of rice might be larger.

These chips are use on many designs for critical things like a boot loader or who knows.

I can find other chips that do different things here is one slightly more complex (with more pins) that is still 2 x 3 millimeters and cost 31 cents. buy it here:
https://www.digikey.com/product-det...ology/24LC02BT-I-MC/24LC02BT-I-MCCT-ND/857624

But that said here is my #1 pick because I know it is dead-easy to use and has a great support ecosystem...

Look at the "Tiny4" AVR processor. It has a CPU, RAM, ROM and I/O divices and is about 3 millimeter long and cost well under $1. This is an entire computer on a small chip and you can buy them retail. I've used these and keep some in a parts drawer. They hold a lot of C++ code and can do some complex things. If you have a yellow wood pencil this chip will fit on the eraser. read more about them here:
http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/ATtiny4-5-9-10-Data-Sheet-DS40002060A.pdf

If I was going the plant a device this Tiny4 wold be my "go to" unit.

 

[BaltimoreMediaBlog]

The lying is not surprising. They could involve class action lawsuits of all things, Apple's most hated things. The international community is generally China apologists. If anything comes of this, it will only come through the U.S.
But yeah, I definitely smell a rat.

 

[BvizioN]

But what if the government has told Apple, Amazon, etc. that if you are asked about this, you must deny everything, including answering whether you have been contacted about it, and if you are under any restrictions to speak about it? I'm not sure that's so far-fetched these days. Especially since large US systems being compromised by Chinese spying, or even a rumor of it, has massive personal, political, and economic impacts.

Nonsense. You can not cover the sun with your thumb. The truth would simply be far too big to be kept a secret. One way or the other it would come out.

 

[jon3543]

Trump deep-state operation to make Americans more willing to accept pain from tariffs on Chinese goods?
Kushner seems a likely source for Bloomberg. Could be any of a dozen different people though.
Maybe the reporter will let us know his source.

Came here to post this, but tariffs are the least of it. It's mainly to deflect from their Russia collusion and paint China as the real interferer.

 

[iapplelove]

I wouldn’t write it off as a fake story just yet.
[doublepost=1538822303][/doublepost]

Nonsense. You can not cover the sun with your thumb. The truth would simply be far too big to be kept a secret. One way or the other it would come out.

Don’t always assume.

 

[gnasher729]

But what if the government has told Apple, Amazon, etc. that if you are asked about this, you must deny everything, including answering whether you have been contacted about it, and if you are under any restrictions to speak about it? I'm not sure that's so far-fetched these days. Especially since large US systems being compromised by Chinese spying, or even a rumor of it, has massive personal, political, and economic impacts.

The US government can in some situations force companies to keep things secret. They can currently not force them to lie.

 

[Kabeyun]

but the question remains

To you perhaps. Not to most everyone else.

 

[ericwn]

And then some wonder why people have lost all faith on the mainstream media. Pathetic.

Pathetic has been that many here tended to believe this although there was more than strong reasons to doubt the story.
But I guess these posters won’t come forward to take their ********* of accusations back nor revise their own viewpoints.

 

[Kabeyun]

Here is my theory (guess)...

Some Chinese agency did this while the motherboards were still in China. SuperMicro knew nothin about this.

The Apple finds the problem and contacts the government and the US government counter intelligence people see this as a windfall. They can send the Chinese agent bogus information. They send made-up numbers then if ever they see those made-up numbers being used then they know who did this. It is like paying the kidnapper with "marked" bills and then waiting for the bills to be spent.

The government guys were VERY disappointed that a US news company broke this story. They wanted the Chinese to think they had not been discovered. Now all that work of sending the fake data (marked bills) is wasted.

The government guys are trying and failing badly to reduce their losses by forcing Apple, Google and everyone else to "shut up" but it's to late. The Chinese know now that all the data they got over the last 3 years is bogus and will burn their marked bills.

This is as bad as when after years of work the police are about to close in on the top mob-boss and then some news story breaks about how the cops infiltrated the mob and got some mid-level thugs. All that work is gone and they don't get the boss.

I am sure others will make different guesses but the Bloomberg story was SOLID, they had multiple sources that said that same thing and sources where both in handout of government. It was a pretty hard solid story.

Here is MY theory...

It turns out that recently-identified Earth-like exoplanet Kepler-62e actually does host intelligent life, and super intelligent at that. They have been monitoring our progress for centuries through a wormhole they created in space. The 62e-ians realized that Apple, Inc. is such a successful technology company that they were the most likely candidate to come up with a way to use handheld devices to detect wormholes in interstellar space. This would spill their space beans and potentially reveal their presence to Earthlings, something they just won’t permit.

Knowing that the Chinese were hot on Apple’s tails, the 62e-ians cooked up a scheme to frame the Chinese by mind control. They were able to modify a neutrino beam to control the mind of Xi Jinping and plant schematics for a tiny microchip that looked like it could spy on incoming data traffic, but could physically evaporate 60 days after deployment, making it’s installation impossible to detect. Xi then, in a semi-hypnotic state, passed the schematics to their hardware development team.

Meanwhile, the 62e-ians had created a clone of Don Clegg, Supermicro’s SVP of Worldwide Sales, for whom they established a residence in Cupertino at the time. He was able to infiltrate the Apple leadership team and convince them that going public would be in no one’s best interest, as a beam from outer space would wipe them all out on command. Check, and mate.

What our two theories have in common is that they’re equally provable.

 

[DanBig]

What if the chip is an 8K EEPROM that took the place of some other EEPROM. SO the Plant is just to cut a trace with a tiny drill then solder your memory in place of an existing memory chip. That is not very complex just a simple swap.

It is very common now to use memory with a serial or "I2C interface because it uses very few PCB traces. Having few traces make the swap simple

Here is an 8K EEPROM that you can order today http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/21710K.pdf
it costs 25 cents for one unit.

Look at the SIZE. if you order the "CS" package the chip in less than 1 millimeter square. A grain of rice might be larger.

These chips are use on many designs for critical things like a boot loader or who knows.

I can find other chips that do different things here is one slightly more complex (with more pins) that is still 2 x 3 millimeters and cost 31 cents. buy it here:
https://www.digikey.com/product-det...ology/24LC02BT-I-MC/24LC02BT-I-MCCT-ND/857624

But that said here is my #1 pick because I know it is dead-easy to use and has a great support ecosystem...

Look at the "Tiny4" AVR processor. It has a CPU, RAM, ROM and I/O divices and is about 3 millimeter long and cost well under $1. This is an entire computer on a small chip and you can buy them retail. I've used these and keep some in a parts drawer. They hold a lot of C++ code and can do some complex things. If you have a yellow wood pencil this chip will fit on the eraser. read more about them here:
http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/ATtiny4-5-9-10-Data-Sheet-DS40002060A.pdf

If I was going the plant a device this Tiny4 wold be my "go to" unit.

You missed the point! 'The Device' would be more than just a EEPROM or the Tiny4. It would need much more and the amount of lines needed to connect to the system would be more than 6. You have the idea the server has an exposed serial interface that the 'Device' would even be able to talk to the system. You still have a square peg round hole problem no matter what the size of the device is, these are still much larger than a grain of rice!

BTW - The patch lines to connect it would be exposed still quite visible!

 

[bob24]

Bloomberg is no fan of Trump, if not outright antipathetic. Stop letting the orange one rent space in your heads.

This is just some second rate journalist not wanting to drop what seemed a juicy story despite contrary information.

Could be both second rate journalism and government propaganda to be fair. No matter how they dislike Trump, a second rate journalist getting "insider information" from the government which would lead to a sensational article won't care where it comes from and will publish it, and I have no doubt the US government knows how to use the media (both friendly and unfriendly).

So while I am not saying this is what happened, it is not impossible that a member of the US administration fed a dodgy bone to Bloomberg which went for it.

 

[lkrupp]

Does this qualify for a defamation lawsuit against Bloomberg? If so, that could hurt them more than they've gained from this publicity stunt.

In order for a lawsuit to be brought Apple would have to prove Bloomberg knew its report was false and released it for the purpose of damaging Apple. News media are generally protected from any legal action for stories like this. It’s a much higher standard of proof required than normal. Journalists are almost untouchable under the First Amendment.

 

[supercoolmanchu]

And then some wonder why people have lost all faith on the mainstream media. Pathetic.

Isn’t this kinda like saying “and then some wonder why people have lost gourmet confidence in McDoland’s hamburgers “?

It’s weirder that people ever ascribed ‘top quality’ to the mainstream press, they’ve always been the quick and silly pages.

 

[jamezr]

What if the NSA added the chip after Apple declined to provide a back door? And then blamed China once somebody found out.

huh? Do you know what it takes to add a chip to a intricate piece of hardware after it has been manufactured? The whole board is designed and soldered and wired to work together. You can't just add a chip after the fact that was not designed to be there in the first place. The board is designed with security in place to prevent this very thing from happening.
If this story is true.......the chip was added during manufacturing.

Theses boards are not commercial motherboards like you can buy at computer stores. Those boards are designed to work with other OEM parts and manufactures.

The boards in question are specifically designed to ONLY work with special hardware. They have instructions built into the chips to only allow hardware it was designed to work with.
So if you add an extra chip it would not work. At first boot it would display warnings that the extra hardware was installed.

 

[supercoolmanchu]

Could be both second rate journalism and government propaganda to be fair. No matter how they dislike Trump, a second rate journalist getting "insider information" from the government which would lead to a sensational article won't care where it comes from and will publish it, and I have no doubt the US government knows how to use the media (both friendly and unfriendly).

So while I am not saying this is what happened, it is not impossible that a member of the US administration fed a dodgy bone to Bloomberg which went for it.

I think the smarter money is on Bloomberg schlocking together a hit piece before the cheaper new iPhones hit the stores. Seems kinda obvious, some major rag does one of these gotcha pieces every year around this time.

Apple marketing is spending a lot right now, and Bloomberg would recognize that increases the exposure for even trivial articles. They likely rehashed and padded this with some phony intrigue because they literally had nothing else catchy on deck for iPhone season.

 

[genovelle]

But what if the government has told Apple, Amazon, etc. that if you are asked about this, you must deny everything, including answering whether you have been contacted about it, and if you are under any restrictions to speak about it? I'm not sure that's so far-fetched these days. Especially since large US systems being compromised by Chinese spying, or even a rumor of it, has massive personal, political, and economic impacts.

Considering Apple has no problem fighting the department of Justice to the end, that is not fit. It is a planted story to sure up support for tariffs and at the same time throw a dark cloud over the media and tech companies that have been vocal against tariffs and other policies. For the planters it’s a win win win. The reader will choose a side they either believe Apple is complicit and lying and can’t be trusted, the FBI is forcing a coverup and can’t be trusted, or the media made it all up and can’t be trusted. Now who or what organization would benefit from any of these situations? Trump and his Administration. They are the only ones at odds with each of these groups. And also, represent the government contact. Apple has no reason to lie, and have no problem not commenting on things they don’t want to. They also publish how often law enforcement requests data every quarter, but they will be negatively impacted by the tariffs and will be vocal, the FBI is not involved in the probe into Russia so they are an enemy often targeted in speeches, but have no reason to say there is no investigation, and the why would Bloomberg risk their reputation to print an all around known false story. Surely clicks alone are not worth it.

I believe they may have been provided a very convincing story that sounded like the scoop of the century and came from someone it would be difficult to expose for various reasons.

 

[shplock]

but the question remains

No, it does not
[doublepost=1538850746][/doublepost]

Indeed.
The question being: why would a previously respected business news outlet, publish a blatantly made up story designed to discredit products and services coming from China? And why this is happening at the time when the US administration has triggered a tariff war with China?

Bloomberg is only respected among the brain dead trolls and the shorts/wallstreet types. They have zero credibility with those of us who have memories and remember their repeated likes about others including Tesla.
[doublepost=1538850872][/doublepost]

But what if the government has told Apple, Amazon, etc. that if you are asked about this, you must deny everything, including answering whether you have been contacted about it, and if you are under any restrictions to speak about it? I'm not sure that's so far-fetched these days. Especially since large US systems being compromised by Chinese spying, or even a rumor of it, has massive personal, political, and economic impacts.

Not likely. Look at how Apple can not longer keep any secret. from iOS leaking to iPhones and more.
Apple has the right to free speech under the 1st amendment. I am no expert but I seriously doubt that the spooks could force Apple and every single employee to stay silent.
[doublepost=1538850995][/doublepost]

Fake responses from trillion dollar companies because, you know, they have nothing to lose in this game... Lying in the name of all that money. Nah. The government covering something up? Nah. That couldn't happen. It couldn't be that the Chinese hung our asses out to dry, or that the US has ever intercepted goods shipped overseas and modified them to spy.

If this "story" did actually happen, which I am not saying it did or did not, do you really think that the parties involved would say, "Yeah. The Chinese won this round of spying. Sorry. Our bad.".

Never underestimate your enemies. More importantly, never underestimate the people you choose to trust.

Fake news. LOL. The biggest ******** phrase I have ever listened to. Every time a story shines a negative light on something, it just HAS to be FAKE NEWS!!! Hmmm. Who was it that coined that phrase? What a legacy to leave behind - coining the term fake news. lol

Disclaimer: I do believe that there is news that is made up - aka fake news. I also know that everyone tells a story their own way. It's human nature. I'm not naive, and I don't believe something JUST because someone says, or writes it.

EDIT: I see that two people posted similar posts to the one I wrote while I was writing it. Oops...

I hear what you are saying however sometimes things are exactly as they appear. Sometime there is no conspiracy. This is as it appears, bad reporting by Bloomberg who do have track record for false made up stories.
[doublepost=1538851128][/doublepost]

Why would Michael Bloomberg's company make up a story that puts nationalist gas in Trump's tank? Makes no sense.

Because they can and they only care for the clicks and views and they ultimately serve the powerful elite and politicians. it is hand in glove type of work in that sometimes they appear to be against the establishment when really they are for them.
You can never trust the MSM, ever!
[doublepost=1538851171][/doublepost]

At this point, there is a clear divide between what Bloomberg is reporting and the denials from Apple, Amazon, and Supermicro. In the coming days, additional information will hopefully provide some clarity about the matter.

There can't be any clarity in this matter. There is no middle ground. Bloomberg claims to have like a dozen different sources all over the federal government for this story.

Someone is lying.

"Someone is lying" Yeah...Bloomberg are! LOL

 

[IowaLynn]

First rule of fight club...
As for NDA or even NSL... see rule #1.

Disclosing sources & methods - even by outright early cancellation of large order would raise flags.

John Bolton is only beneficiary of this. Kushner has too many financial business ties to China I’d think.