Bloomberg’s ‘The Big Hack’

Re:Bloomberg’s ‘The Big Hack’ by ProAm on Thursday October 04, 2018 @02:39PM (#18142394)

No but the gov might be unhappy that the secret is out while they were trying to use the chips to infiltrate/reverse engineer wherever the chips were reporting to? Amazon has gov contracts it wants to protect so Im not surprised they would deny this at the govs request, and Apple's #1 product is privacy so having something like this show up on their servers would undermine that product strategy so I can understand their denial too (homegrown or at the govs request)

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Re:Bloomberg’s ‘The Big Hack’ by thebooglebooski on Thursday October 04, 2018 @02:54PM (#18142534)

This seems like the most likely reason for domestic companies to deny everything, and for their supply chain distributors to play along.

1) Big company partners with distributor. 2) Distributor has security issues. 3) Gov is already aware of security issues, says nothing. 4) Big company becomes aware of issues. 5)Gov steps in and pitches a deal: i)Both big company and distributor must deny. ii)In return, gov gets to: iii)Preserve any existing contracts iv)Protect the big company and distributor, with any legal, trade, or commercial benefits

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Re:Bloomberg’s ‘The Big Hack’ by drawkbox on Thursday October 04, 2018 @04:13PM (#18143269)

> Amazon has gov contracts it wants to protect so Im not surprised they would deny this at the govs request, and Apple's #1 product is privacy so having something like this show up on their servers would undermine that product strategy so I can understand their denial too

Additionally, Amazon and Apple are two of the still allowed to compete western companies in China that they haven't booted out of their markets, it could be that Amazon and Apple also want to retain the Chinese market and don't want to appear like they are helping while they have the cover of the NSL.

Amazon and Apple are caught in a tough spot and the hardware issue/espionage device is definitely true. It is probably just that the people that know in the company aren't allowed to say and the PR team is not part of that 'need to know' group. Either way, trust of Chinese manufacturing is over, which hits Apple very hard in both market and domestic trust.

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