In the first article, Bloomberg quoted Joe Fitzpatrick. 5 days later [0] he said his quotes were taken out of context.
In the second article, Bloomberg quoted Yossi Appleboum, who on the same day the article broke suggested that he was misrepresented. [1]
Apple, Amazon, Homeland Security, and others have all said there was no evidence at all, and called for a retraction.
As it stands... Bloomberg were talking about something they didn't understand. There were and are some theoretical problems in hardware security. But the story as they broke it is completely false.
[0] https://risky.biz/RB517_feature/
[1] https://www.servethehome.com/yossi-appleboum-disagrees-bloom...
That means Apple and Amazon are more credible in this case, unless there is some super secret NatSec exception to securities law that we don't know about.
[1] Specifically, SEC Rule 14a-9 in conjunction with Section 32(a) of the Exchange Act.
Did you not hear about the phonetapping business [0]? There is no way that a government-sponsored secret hardware backdoor would get any executives in trouble.
SEC rules are not a reasonable protection - or even consideration - when dealing with the US spying apparatus. If there was a hardware backdoor program:
(1) There would be a secret exemption to SEC rules.
(2) There would probably be a secret "we will end you" threat if the execs revealed details. Snowden & Assange would be mentioned.
(3) Even ignoring those two points, the rules would be ignored and changed later if there were any legal difficulties.
[0] https://www.cnet.com/news/senate-endorses-retroactive-fisa-i...
If secret chips were going to be used, they'd be very targeted in nature (like a fake Comcast modem that they give to a specific target) rather than something general.
In this case "anything" might mean transmitting a single bit of information that "this is an interesting box, come take a look".
[0] https://www.servethehome.com/yossi-appleboum-disagrees-bloom...
Apple made an official statement that the claims were, well, bullshit and that no such chips have ever been found.
Amazon published a signed statement from its chief security officer saying that the Bloomberg article was “so full of inaccuracies ... that they’re hard to count” and that after their own security team and an external security team had gone into the claims in detail they found them to be untrue.
So, I have to ask, does anyone know if Bloomberg actually published the evidence they claimed they would release?