“Bloomberg had a stunningly important — and apparently stunningly wrong — news story about an alleged iCloud spy chip and now it’s hoping we’ll forget about it,” William Gallagher writes for AppleInsider. “Two months on, the company has a responsibility to either prove or retract it, and it’s a responsibility the publication is avoiding.”
“Apple, Amazon, the government, national security advisors, and independent technology experts alike have all said Bloomberg Businessweek is wrong about Chinese-made spy chips in iCloud servers,” Gallagher writes. “They haven’t just said it, they’ve issued extensively detailed and documented evidence to say this didn’t happen and could not happen… Of course we also know that Bloomberg has a record for publishing incorrect stories about Apple. Those stories included predictions of poor sales of iPads, iPhones, Apple TV and HomePods based on incomplete reporting or ignoring facts that contradicted the idea.”
“Apple, Amazon and all other firms even tangentially mentioned in the piece have refuted the allegations and done so vehemently. Unusually vehemently in the case of Apple, which more often refuses to comment on stories,” Gallagher writes. “Bloomberg needs to prove it or do what Tim Cook insists and retract it.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last month: If it isn’t backed, you must retract.
https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/1049018902984835072
SEE ALSO:
Investigating implausible Bloomberg Businessweek’s Supermicro spy chip yarn – October 23, 2018
AWS CEO joins Tim Cook in urging Bloomberg Businessweek to retract its Chinese spy chip yarn – October 22, 2018
Super Micro to review hardware for malicious chips – October 22, 2018
Apple CEO Tim Cook: Bloomberg Businessweek should do the right thing and retract its Chinese spy chip story – October 19, 2018
Before China iCloud spy chip allegations, Bloomberg published these five incorrect stories about Apple – October 10, 2018
U.S. Senators Rubio and Blumenthal demand answers from Supermicro over spy chip allegations – October 10, 2018
Apple CEO Tim Cook is in Shanghai in possible PR move after Bloomberg Businessweek’s spy chip yarn – October 9, 2018
One of Bloomberg’s sources told them Chinese spy chip story ‘didn’t make sense’ – October 9, 2018
Apple suppliers took an $18 billion stock hit after Bloomberg’s disputed China hacking report – October 5, 2018
UK cyber security agency backs Apple, Amazon China hack denials – October 5, 2018
Apple official statement: What Bloomberg Businessweek got wrong about Apple – October 5, 2018
Apple strongly disputes Bloomberg BusinessWeek report that Chinese ‘spy’ chips were found in iCloud servers – October 4, 2018
Bloomberg as any type of news reporting agency should be shunned by all as completely unreliable and obsessively self-serving. The National Enquirer of believable financial sources. So they then can report on space monkeys flying out their butts interfering with technology development freely.
It stunning that Bloomberg would flush their reputation down the toilet.
Bloomberg is a corporate NeoLib rag whose interest is maintaining their fiduciary responsibility to its amoral investors that does not know how to repudiate its lie.
Bloomberg Business is like Consumer Reports — you can trust them on some things, but definitely not technology.
Their refusal to follow up on this with anything corroborating is worrisome, though. And what was the source? Was this just a massive screwup, or did someone set them up? Either way, we deserve to know.
They are wrong that it could not happen. Of course it could happen especially in China. The method of interfacing with the BMC controller is entirely feasible. It passes technical scrutiny. Anyone who read the details knows this. However it’s an unorthodox way to do it, so even though technically feasible it’s not the right way to do it.
However, it probably did not happen and I suspect Bloomberg may have been fed misinformation etc. in order to discredit and instill distrust in Chinese manufacturing.