[Beowulf] Hacked MBs It was only a matter of time

[Kilian Cavalotti]

On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 6:48 AM Douglas Eadline <deadline at eadline.org> wrote:
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

I don't know, that Bloomberg piece seems to be lacking specific
technical details to be really credible. There's quite a lot of
skepticism being raised about those claims, and the Apple denial was
pretty adamant.

It sure seems all possible, but is it likely? To have dealt with my
share of issues with those manufacturers' BMC firmwares, I'd tend to
think they're quite busy making regular and documented functionality
properly work, before they can add almost-invisible chips that can
magically "alter the operating system’s core so it could accept
modifications [and] also contact computers controlled by the attackers
in search of further instructions and code".

So I'm wondering how much of this is non-technical journalists just
discovering what a BMC is.

Not saying that it's not true, but the whole story seriously needs
more technical details, other than what "former US intelligence
officials" said.

Cheers,
-- 
Kilian