Intel informed Chinese companies, including Lenovo and Alibaba, of the Meltdown and Spectre flaws in its processors before the U.S. government found out from reading press reports:
Intel Corporation initially warned a handful of customers, including several Chinese technology firms, about security flaws within its processor chips, while at the same time not telling the U.S. government, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
Security experts told the newspaper that the decision could have allowed Chinese tech companies to flag the vulnerabilities to Beijing, giving the Chinese government opportunity to exploit them.
Jake Williams, head of the security company Rendition Infosec and former National Security Agency (NSA) employee, told the Journal that it is a "near certainty" the Chinese government knew about the flaws from the Intel correspondence with Chinese tech companies, as Beijing keeps tabs on such communications.
The Journal reported that Alibaba Group, a top selling Chinese cloud-computing services company, was among the firms notified of the flaw early on.
The NSA is more likely to spy on you than China.
Intel CEO sold shares on same day OEMs informed of bugs: report
Also at TechCrunch and Engadget.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday January 30 2018, @08:28AM (1 child)
While the NSA did have the telcos do it for them... and would force them to comply if they did not... The telcos did charge for this service. They actually made hefty profits off of this as well.
When government and/or police ask telcos to give them information about phone records, they are charged for this information... just because the tv shows don't mention the price doesn't mean it isn't true.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday January 31 2018, @12:54AM
Huh.. if that's true, and you'd assume the amount if large and not a small token (otherwise it'd be pointless), wouldn't that come out in the financial statement somewhere? Unless other regulatory (i.e. corporate, tax, etc.) bodies are also involved. That would seem unlikely as trying to keep mum with so many parties involved would be quite hard... especially nowadays when leak du jour is the new black.