Making sense of the alleged Supermicro motherboard attack

Re:Making sense of the alleged Supermicro motherboard attack by PeterisP on Friday October 05, 2018 @01:16PM (#18149876)

It's not that you get one chance to do something like this, it's that there is one total chance to do something like this. After it's been discovered, it's much harder to do it again for everyone - so if you never do it, then you don't get the benefit and Russia or USA or someone else does that and gets the benefit and you still lose the ability to do it in the future.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Making sense of the alleged Supermicro motherboard attack by e12e on Friday October 05, 2018 @03:08PM (#18150868)

The second generation chips mentioned in the Bloomberg article were fitted inside the plastic of the motherboard. I don't think it's a stretch to imagine that such chips might be really difficult to spot. And if they aren't the natural next step for a nation state is to build an xx billion dollar fab factory and produce smd "resistors" that contain one of these chips.

I think the real trick is a real covert channel that's hard to find both analytically and via stastics/machine learning. Which is stil high enough bw.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Making sense of the alleged Supermicro motherboard attack by visarga on Friday October 05, 2018 @01:52PM (#18150182)

It's so hard to detect that I doubt they will never do it again.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Making sense of the alleged Supermicro motherboard attack by e12e on Friday October 05, 2018 @03:03PM (#18150810)

I think the real trick is a real covert channel that's hard to find both analytically and via stastics/machine learning.

[ Parent | on HN ]