Chinese memory-maker YMTC sues US rival Micron for defamation instead of the usual patent breaches

China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies has accused rival chipmaker Micron of defamation through a campaign to publish nasty stories and reports about it. The Chinese company (YMTC) recently filed a complaint [PDF] in US District Court that names Micron and public affairs firm DCI as plaintiffs, and alleges they ran a scheme that …

[Phil Kingston]

Should see what Bloomberg reckon on this - they did very well in finding those spy chips in SuperMicro kit.

[BartyFartsLast]

It's fun to sue at the YMTC

Make your own jokes

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: It's fun to sue at the YMTC

Y--M--T--C! (By "The Villiage People".)

[An_Old_Dog]

Avoiding the Issue

While YMTC (or any other company) cannot build memory chips which "phone home", they can build memory chips which leak information via side channels.

[Roopee]

Re: Avoiding the Issue

Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting idea though

Adding a basic RISC processor masquerading as a part of the memory controller circuitry would likely pass muster. Hiding its firmware might be harder but flash memory controllers probably already include CPU(s) and firmware so constructing a dual use controller might not be so difficult after all.

If the flash memory held the system partitions I could imagine critical Windows components being "patched" imaginatively. If the component were demand paged the "fiddling" could be done during the page-in phase leaving the installed component unmolested.

Perhaps also avoiding Micron products in sensitive applications might be wise.

[David Pearce]

It's still much easier to spy from the CPU, all of these "management engines" from Intel and AMD