I can’t imagine anyone giving in to these demands. The benefit (secrecy over a product which will no longer be secret in six months) just isn’t enough to make it worthwhile. And that’s assuming that the crims can be trusted - what guarantee that they won’t just pocket the cash and publish anyway? None. That’s what.
Apple supplier Quanta Computer confirms it's fallen victim to ransomware attack
Quanta Computer, an ODM laptop manufacturer and prolific Apple supplier, has now confirmed that digital burglars broke into its systems. In a statement provided to Bloomberg, Quanta said: "Quanta Computer's information security team has worked with external IT experts in response to cyber attacks on a small number of Quanta …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 21st April 2021 20:17 GMT tip pc
The prize for paying is that hopefully they will continue to win contracts with their customers as their customers closely kept secrets remain secret.
Apple are notoriously secretive, especially now they are transitioning to their own silicon.
Oddly, future Mac silicon product leaks would actually help Apple especially if the specs if future Apple silicon where to leak.
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Thursday 22nd April 2021 06:57 GMT 45RPM
So rather than paying the crims, pay the businesses affected a large sum in compensation. The fact that this story exists, regardless of whether or not anything leaks, is damaging enough reputationally. Sufficient compensation might help them hold on to some of the business that they risk losing.
On a different note, because it occurs to me that some tech savvy crims might read The Register, I wonder if it has occurred to the blackmailers that this kind of action can cause a company to go out of business with thousands of lost jobs. This is a far from victimless crime. And many of those people who lose jobs will not be able to afford to be without work, and many won’t be able to get equivalent work quickly. Honestly, I don’t know how the criminals sleep at night.
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Wednesday 21st April 2021 20:49 GMT Throatwarbler Mangrove
Poking the bear
Maybe it's just me, but I would be extremely leery of trying ransomware against billionaire tech companies. Surely, at some point, they start using cutouts to employ counter-criminals, possibly (and hopefully) including a wet works team who leave the malware writers in pieces at the bottom of a river.
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Wednesday 21st April 2021 22:08 GMT RM Myers
Quanta Quality
I bought 2 old HP laptops (DV9000 series) which had Quanta branded motherboards, so I assume they built the computers. I wonder if any emails will be dumped online. It would be interesting to know who was at fault for the GPU and monitor cable issues which plagued this model - HP, Quanta, or Nvidia. And yes, I'm still bitter that I was never notified about a class action lawsuit settlement for the affected GPU's and an extension of the warranty period by HP until after both had expired. Ugh!
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Thursday 22nd April 2021 08:26 GMT DialTone
Re: Quanta Quality
I'm not entirely certain, but I had always understood that this was a manufacturing issue on Nvidia's part where there was a die/packaging issue which caused some kind of separation to occur after repeated thermal swings (and the chips tended to run too hot apparently). There was a subsequent BIOS update from HP which essentially caused the fan to run continuously to try to keep the chip cooler.
Usually this sort of fault can be rectified by a reball of the affected chip (akin to the XBox RROD issue) but I understood that in this case a replacement chip may have been necessary to fully correct the problem.
I recall there was a class-action lawsuit against Nvidia around that time claiming that they had known about but concealed this problem, and that ultimately they set aside a couple of hundred million USD to cover anticipated warranty repair issues, but I don't know how that played out in practice.
I myself had a Quanta-branded machine at around this time (circa 2008) which ultimately died from this fault. I never did bother to get it repaired as the machine had had a fairly good innings already and was rather dated by that point.
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Thursday 22nd April 2021 15:37 GMT 45RPM
Interesting thought, but proven wrong throughout history. Capital Punishment does not stop murder or rape and I doubt it would stop blackmail. If it did then countries with Capital Punishment would have lower crime rates than countries which don’t - and, by and large, that isn’t the case.
Per 100,000 people the rate of murder is as follows:
Russia 8.21
US - 4.96
Saudi Arabia - 1.3
China - 0.53
The UK sits at 1.2.
China is an interesting point, since it appears much lower than the UK - but reputable studies suggest that its crime statistics should be taken with a pinch of salt, given that police authorities tend to bend the facts to appease their political masters. That said, if we do trust those figures then I offer Norway (0.47) as a counter to China.
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