China reportedly spied on US companies using chips hidden on servers, Apple and Amazon deny claims

a reply to: penroc3

That's assuming they have the right people running cyber security in the govt areas... the big OPM hack a few years ago went on for 6 months, the only reason they got caught was a change in leadership upgraded the security software (even though the program selected was still crap) but it was good enough to catch the hack.



But back in the Clinton era we did hemorrhage secrets, either through hacks or agreements to let china have some.

originally posted by: Irishhaf
China has been robbing our secrets since at least bill Clinton probably sooner and nobody cares... but a couple Russian trolls and we have to stop everything and investigate.

Its nuts..

Many have either forgot or simply were unaware, Clinton gave China advanced Missile tech. Or rather chose to look the other way [ WINK WINK ] when Chinese were caught red handed stealing it. Then a few short years later their Space program made huge advances by leaps and bounds.

Gotta love William Jefferson Clinton, who is he Married too again?

a reply to: Irishhaf

we sold them some of out best(at the time) warhead esgin that are still in use in are Minuteman III's MIRVS. there was that Chinese nation that got poped with treason in regards to that and only did a handful of years out of his enormous sentence. make of that what you will.

if i were in charge of security for a major corp. or the government i would have trusted black hats do a pen test on my systems and look over all dye plans for all chips and other jellybeans on my boards.

and if possible make custom chips and OS's

a reply to: penroc3


That's the trick, I am just getting into the career field myself but have a friend that was cyber security at a base.
The leadership he had to deal with was so bad he requested a demotion because he didn't want to get blamed for his bosses bad choices.

They didn't have anyone on staff qualified to do penetration testing as a white hat, and the more he pushed the more trouble he found till he said screw it I want out of security.

a reply to: Irishhaf

there are a bunch of videos on youtube from defcon and other conventions and it is scary some of the holes they found and presented.

granted they were all fixed but i saw one presentation that showed most of a certain CPU manufacturing product line was able to see all the processes on a cpu and bypass all the security, granted it was a physical hack and not a software one but when i hear stuff like that the scenario outlined in this thread doesn't seem to far fetched.


some of the physical security at bases is lack luster to say the least, so if there was a good team or spy in place allot of damage could be done.


i know the US AF uses allot of sun system computers, super expensive but very nice, and made not in china.

a reply to: penroc3

Funny you should mention the idea of "Honey Potting" then. That might be why the denials, etc.

The Soviets got sensitive information on the Space Shuttle program way back, and tried to use it to make their own version. It flew once and was a total failure. As it turns out, we made sure the information they got that was good enough to be convincing and execute on, but bad enough to mess their program up. The misinformation campaign wasn't declassified until decades later.

So, maybe somebody has a bunch of these exploited servers in a data center packed full of misinformation for them to "steal".

a reply to: Irishhaf

This goes way back. It's not specific to any one political party.

One if the worst was when a Japanese company (sub-contractor? Some subsidiary of Toshiba) with access to US submarine data, flat-out SOLD it to the Chinese back in the 80's.

Something to do with anti-cavitation propeller designs if I recall correctly.

To this day, I do not knowungly buy anything from Toshiba.

I would of thought this kind thing is common practice across all technology based companies, probably why Apple and Amazon are denying its happened. They all probably use hardware/software to spy & collect data on each other & the public. Also I never understand why all these companies & websites ask permission to use our data, you know they're gonna use it regardless of whether we agree or not.

I don't blame China for this.
No one held a gun to the contractors heads to buy it.

originally posted by: Arnie123
a reply to: EnhancedInterrogator

So, after reading this article and becoming extremely angry, I hate how Apple denies the attack, to save face. Amazon was a lot more forthcoming with their issues. Apple, disgusting.

Furthermore, since those companies have been severed, I really think this is a wake up call to Americans.

The Chinese are on the offensive now. Something HAS to happen to blunt these attacks.

Call it what you want, THESE ARE ATTACKS ON SOVERIGN AMERICAN SOIL.

Nothing will happen.
The cheap labor express would have a fit.

The U.S. has similar programs and, for that matter, routinely forwards classified intelligence to the Department of Commerce for potential economic benefit to its ultimate recipients, though I think these efforts tend to be more focused in nature (and I could be completely wrong about that).

Oftentimes, in both the U.S. and China, companies willingly cooperate with government agencies seeking to use their products or services for surveillance purposes. Other times, not so willingly.

So if the reporting is accurate, it's not exactly unexpected that the Chinese government would do something like this.

What to do about it is a little more complicated, however. Intelligence is not a discipline well served by rash actions.

Indeed, simply letting an adversary know the jig is up forfeits what might otherwise be a significant counterintelligence advantage.