Super Micro is moving production from China due to fear of spying

[Deus Voltage]

7 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

While I agree, I'm more likely to trust CNN and my own government over the Chinese government.

 

Or any government that calls itself communist.

Highly disagree.

 

it doesn't really matter if it's the U.S. ( Corrupt Capitalism) or China (Pseudo Communism, corrupt Capitalism) that is doing the spying. Spying on your own citizens is a slippery slope that chips away at what little freedom you may have until you're either living an Orwellian nightmare or a Huxlian version of the teletubbies.

 

Again, careful what you wish for.

[TOMPPIX]

what exactly would the motherboards be sending back to china?

[Bouzoo]

13 minutes ago, TOMPPIX said:

what exactly would the motherboards be sending back to china?

All data goes through motherboard from point A to B. You could install in theory a module that could scan everything that passes through some specific path from CPU to RAM for instance. Which is everything. Just a simplified example. 

[PocketNerd]

9 hours ago, Eaglerino said:

I'd rather have the NSA spy on me than China. At least it's my own country and I probably won't get shipped off to a gulag

So you'd rather have a Country who CAN put you in jail spy on you? China isn't much of a threat since you don't live within it's jurisdiction. USA on the other hand...

[RejZoR]

27 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

All data goes through motherboard from point A to B. You could install in theory a module that could scan everything that passes through some specific path from CPU to RAM for instance. Which is everything. Just a simplified example. 

It's not that simple. The MITM chip would have to capture, process and store terabytes of data which just doesn't make any practical sense. Only thing one could do such a thing is to gain privilege escalation somehow in a similar way as Spectre/Meltdown did.

[Bouzoo]

53 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

It's not that simple. The MITM chip would have to capture, process and store terabytes of data which just doesn't make any practical sense. Only thing one could do such a thing is to gain privilege escalation somehow in a similar way as Spectre/Meltdown did.

As I said, simplified. It could search for key words and filter data which would make more sense. It could do it if it had a way of getting in via backdoor as an example. 

[Trik'Stari]

On 5/6/2019 at 3:31 AM, Beskamir said:

And who can? Unfortunately the correct answer is nobody.

Still, these things moving out of the hands of the very obviously corrupt and in my own opinion, blatantly evil, chinese government, is a good thing.

 

On 5/6/2019 at 3:37 AM, Deus Voltage said:

Highly disagree.

 

it doesn't really matter if it's the U.S. ( Corrupt Capitalism) or China (Pseudo Communism, corrupt Capitalism) that is doing the spying. Spying on your own citizens is a slippery slope that chips away at what little freedom you may have until you're either living an Orwellian nightmare or a Huxlian version of the teletubbies.

 

Again, careful what you wish for.

I agree, but still. Fuck the Chinese government. Fuck their support of North Korea despite the blatant and obvious horror that is going on in that country. I won't be surprised when it gets out that North Korea was only supported by China because they were doing ICBM testing on behalf of the Chinese.

[xentropa]

On 5/6/2019 at 7:10 AM, Bouzoo said:

Another day, another China spying article. 

Super Micro, the server board manufacturer is completely ditching China as the country of their production. If you don't remember, last October Bloomberg published an article about spy chips that were allegedly being installed in Super Micro equipment that was used by Amazon and Apple, which Super Micro immediately denied. Due to fear being a strong weapon, according to one company executive, Super Micro has been asked not to supply their US customers with motherboards made in China. After all, 60% of their customers are US based.

Apparently things have not been so good for Chinese server boards production in general:

 

 

When they say shifting their production, they really do mean that:

Seems that the damage has already been done, since Super Micro is expecting a drop of 10% for period of first three months this year due to declining sales ever since the October article was released. 

 

What do you think about Chinese espionage? Reality or a myth? While I think that the level of their espionage has been blown out of proportions with Huawei, I don't think there is not a single company this big that doesn't play dirty on some level.

 

Source:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/Server-maker-Super-Micro-to-ditch-made-in-China-parts-on-spy-fears

 

Myth.

 

The bloomberg article was a load of bunk as well.  Where do you stick this rice sized "chip" with 6 pins to steal all the data?  Theoretically the DRAM to CPU bus is the spinal cord for all sensitive computing communication but you'd need a chip with at least 64 pins since that is the data width size.  Thats also ignoring speed and other practical concerns.

[Stefan Payne]

I never understood why you would want to concentrate all of production in one place...

Dongguan and Shenzhen are where most of the stuff is from - both are north of Hong Kong.

 

There doesn't need to be something bad happening (for example a flood), even something small like a poweroutage or some problem with sanitation/canalization and most factorys that makes stuff for us is standing still. 

Just look at the flood that destroyed many HDD factorys in Thailand back in 2011...

[Scitesh]

On 5/6/2019 at 4:14 AM, Bouzoo said:

Just by looking at your profile picture I can assume where you stand on this. 

 

Also:

Pick one. 

China :training camp /organ donation center

 

On 5/6/2019 at 4:19 AM, BuckGup said:

This makes me believe the Bloomberg article actually had some validity then. Maybe this is why Apple is moving everything to India

Not yet. RN its just the lower end and leased facilities (foxcomm is still setting up in Chennai and gujarat) and for some time they're hiring facilities from micromaxx and xiomi