bloomberg on supermicro: sky is falling

Thu Oct 4 19:26:15 UTC 2018

On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 3:07 PM Denys Fedoryshchenko <denys at visp.net.lb> wrote:
> It would be better for them(AMZN, SMCI, AAPL)  to prove that these
> events did not take place - in court.

"Can't prove a negative."

> In the opposite case, even if this article is full of inaccuracies,
> judging by the discussions of security specialists, the scenario
> indicated in the article is quite possible.

The Bloomberg article described them as looking like 'signal
conditioning couplers" on the motherboard. There is no such part on
server boards but maybe they meant optoisolators or power conditioning
capacitors. The former is a hard place to tweak the BMC from without a
high probability of crashing it. The latter doesn't touch the data
lines at all.

They also quoted someone describing such a hack as being "like
witnessing a unicorn jumping over a rainbow." I agree.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>