So this is somewhat interesting based on how Toshiba got here.
At one point they were a pretty well respected company and then they ran into the same issue that most conglomerates run into in that different parts of their business get different multiples and that often leads investors to give them the multiple of the lowest yielding portion of their business.
To help boost their stock price in the early 2010's they started to fudge their books and were caught and fined in the mid 2010's, I think it was over $6B in fines to indicate just how far they went to fudge their numbers.
After this they had alot of interest from activist investors as nothing attracts an activist investor like an old bumbling conglomerate. Its literally the typical hedge fund target/playbook.
- old company that has lost its way
- scandals affecting the companies books
- conglomerate that can be broken up and sold for pieces to unlock higher multiples in the market.
Now, instead of the activist hedge fund treatment, it will get the private equity treatment, where they'll break the company up but keep the name and spin the company back out in 5-10 years once they've sold off the divisions that can quickly make the investors money.
in the end the market determined that the activists were right and the company was way to big and diversified to be effective.
Sadly instead of the public benefiting from this breakup due to a bump in the share price and dividends being paid out from the breakup it will be a consortium of banks and other companies that benefit from this.
In 2006, Toshiba bought Westinghouse Electric Company in one of the worst deals in history.
Westinghouse negotiated fixed price contracts to construct nuclear reactors and Toshiba provided financial guarantees, so they ended up on the hook for massive cost over-runs. In 2017 alone, Westinghouse reported an annual loss of $9bn. and declared themselves bankrupt.
Toshiba had to sell a load of businesses over the years to escape the Westinghouse black hole and repair their balance sheet.
Didn’t Brookfield buy Westinghouse? How do they plan on avoiding those same risks? Brookfield doesn’t strike me as the kind of company to repeat that sort of error.
Westinghouse is owned by Brookfield Renewable Partners and Cameco.
Cameco is the second largest uranium producer in the world. Brookfield Renewable Partners owns and operates a lot of power generation. Both are Canadian where there is a huge pool of both power generation and specifically nuclear power generation talent and experience. As an example until 2016 Canada had the largest operator nuclear power facility in the world, several provinces are currently in the planning phases of SMRs, and Canada will be financing CANDU reactors in Romania.
It's safe to say they see some sort of advantageous vertical integration of the supply chain, as well as believing regulatory and economic outlooks being good.
CANDU reactors are pretty spiffy. Can run on unenriched natural uranium, or even uranium mixed with thorium or plutonium. Design also comes with a lot of passive safety features.
All the debts were left with Toshiba, otherwise Westinghouse would have been worth far less than nothing, but the learnings would have been retained. And I imagine after such a traumatic experience they wouldn't be forgotten quickly.
I don't think you'll find any of this info online but TOSHIBA is the reason the US Navy has active personnel on ALL Japanese Self Defense Forces ships. ALWAYS, the US Navy has at least 1-2 people stationed on JSDF ships (I did 2 tours on a japanese boat).
This is WILD because it came up as part of an agreement 20 years ago because it was discovered that Toshiba had put a backdoor on all Toshiba hard drives. Basically the US told Japan, either we release what Toshiba did, or you put our Navy guys (I only know navy but probably other branches too) on your boats.
Japan agreed, the scandel went away and Toshiba was left to rot as a zombie company.
Maybe your financial reason got them where they are today, but Toshiba was effectivly dead 20 years ago when they screwed over the US and Japanese governments at the same time, crazy that Japan let them zombify for 20 years.
perfect! :) The story makes no sense, but as always with conspiracy theories there is a small grain of truth in there. Asianometry: Toshiba’s Big Technology Export Scandal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaRyqAVIkwI
Something in their implementation of SMART or some other chip on the controller?
No idea what exactly it would have been a backdoor too. The OS? The BIOS? The data on the drive? Memory? Toshiba has offered a number of hardware and software encryption options over the years, but a casual search didn't turn up much older than 10 years.
You can't, I guess that's the nature of dissiminating top secret information on the Internet, don't believe me, or use it as a jumping off point and look it up, I don't care, just telling you want happened. I could give a few more details but that's the interesting part
I think they mean the machines' OS was backdoored, not the hard drive itself. Happened with Lenovo multiple times, could have happened with other manufacturers.
But also keep in mind the NSA has been backdooring and infiltrating both domestic and foreign commercial entities & critical infrastructure for decades. We can't pretend this is shocking.
>it was discovered that Toshiba had put a backdoor on all Toshiba hard drives
How can we know this is true, and how would a HDD backdoor even work? What's the exploit here?
Does the firmware on the HDD controller magically connect to the internet via the SATA cable and through the host controller to siphon your data to the Japanese alphabet agencies?
Hard drives have firmware and hidden partitions. An attacker with access to these could manipulate them to create a backdoor which allows remote control, data access, etc.
>An attacker with access to the firmware could manipulate it to create a backdoor.
You can create backdoors for every device, not just HDDs, why should Toshiba be liable here? iPhones and Androids have tonnes of exploits written for them? Are we extorting them too for SW bugs that lead to vulnerabilities?
>This might involve modifying the firmware to allow remote control, unauthorized data access, or other malicious actions
Remote access how? Can I talk to the exploited firmware of your HDD via the internet while magically bypassing firewalls and the OS security? Is that a technically feasible thing or are you just speculating without background knowledge?
Sounds like first you'd need to compromise the firewalls, OS, SATA controller and network layers to let outsiders talk to the compromised HDD firmware via the internet and if the attacker already has that kind of remote access to your system, then you're already screwed and compromised and the HDD firmware is the least of your worries.
Even if remote HDD firmware vulnerabilities are not technically feasible and only work if you get your hands on the HDD, in cyber-secvurity world, if your HDD/laptop/PC is in the hands of the attacker, then you can consider it already compromised regardless of HDD firmware security.
Some SSDs understand partition tables and file systems to trim/discard their flash "automagically", so it would be possible for firmware to manipulate e.g. OS components stored on the disk to introduce a backdoor. The hard drive has plenty of storage space for that.
>If Toshiba created a malicous firmware with a backdoor they would be liable for the backdoor.
That's a big IF. Where's the proof for that though? Or is it like the imaginary WMDs in Irak?
Backdoors are usually cleverly disguised software bugs specifically to give you deniability if you ever get caught. It's not like the Jupânese agencies would put their names and signatures in the backdoor's firmare image.
They said it "sent data" back to Japan, that was the issue, the basically got caught stealing us gov data, and this was 20 years ago. So I have no idea.
The US intelligence apparatus discovers that a Japanese company has backdoored all its hard drives which are apparently also installed on USN vessels.
The US, out of benevolence for this non-US company's reputation, I guess, decides to agree to a secret deal with its ally.
The secret deal is that US Navy personnel will be put onto Japanese naval vessels, which in no way remedies the problem of backdoored hard drives that supposedly exist. Random JMSDF captains know the details of this supposedly secret deal and discuss it freely without consequence.
Imagine believing this.
Japan has been a friendly country and valuable Pacific strategic ally for decades. What exactly is the US supposedly gaining here?
Maybe it's more likely there's an exchange program between allied Navies, like there is with dozens of other countries??
> I only got told the story by the commander while we were drinking in our state rooms in the JSDF ship, maybe he was lying?
But you're presenting it here with way more credence than that justifies. This is a conspiracy theory and unsurprisingly this is exactly how they get spread.
The funniest artefact that came of Toshiba embellishment scandal was the sales figures chart for its PC division[1]. Up there with TI and Broadcom in terms of signifying who they are - blue line is sales and red line is profit, but it might as well be a 7805 without a capacitor shown on an oscilloscope.
Sure that's their stated reasoning. But in terms of seeking short term gain and ignoring long term costs, I don't think there's much, if an difference between activist investors and private equity
My first laptop was also a Toshiba but it was loud and plastickey and had some ACPI issue that meant power management didn’t work properly with Linux. For years I wished it was a Lenovo.
Spot on. Their laptops are so close to being great but there was always a little catch that made them just a hop and skip away from being all they could be.
They could be wonderful design but manufactured with some less than stellar materials. Things like that.
I will admit it lasted a long time and it was easy to service -- I upgraded it about 5 times over 5 years before I eventually got rid of it. Actually, I gave it to my dad and he used it for a further 3 or 4 more years. It probably still works ... who knows where it is today.
Around 3 years in I bought a new HP dv9700 on eBay and it failed within 6 months. HP declined to replace because it was from overseas. I ended up back on the "trusty Toshiba" which yeah I'll be honest it wasn't that bad for a cheap $1000 laptop.
Toshiba was really pushing the envelope in the laptop department in regards to how thin it can get, and on the other end how much hardware they can pack.
That came at the price of a lot of custom drivers that would rarely make it to the windows defaults, complete lack of backward (sometimes forward) compatibility, and abysmal linux support.
Clicking through a few Wikipedia articles, we get [1]:
> Tanaka Seisakusho (田中製作所, Tanaka Engineering Works) was the first company established by Tanaka Hisashige, one of the most original and productive inventor-engineers during the Tokugawa / Edo period. Established in July 1875, it was the first Japanese company to manufacture telegraph equipment. It also manufactured switches, and miscellaneous electrical and communications equipment.
I think they mean that if it was founded in 1875 it couldn't have originally been making electrical appliances but that appears to be incorrect because according to Japanese Wikipedia the origin of the company was hisashige Tanaka establishing a telegraph equipment factory in Ginza in 1875
Isn't a telegraph an electric appliance? It is electric and according to Oxford an appliance is:
appliance
/əˈplʌɪəns/
noun
1. a device or piece of equipment designed to perform a specific task.
"electrical and gas appliances"
2. BRITISH
a fire engine.
"three fire appliances were rushed to the scene"
I'm guessing it's electrically performing a specific task, i.e. an electric appliance.
56 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 128 ms ] threadAt one point they were a pretty well respected company and then they ran into the same issue that most conglomerates run into in that different parts of their business get different multiples and that often leads investors to give them the multiple of the lowest yielding portion of their business.
To help boost their stock price in the early 2010's they started to fudge their books and were caught and fined in the mid 2010's, I think it was over $6B in fines to indicate just how far they went to fudge their numbers.
After this they had alot of interest from activist investors as nothing attracts an activist investor like an old bumbling conglomerate. Its literally the typical hedge fund target/playbook.
- old company that has lost its way
- scandals affecting the companies books
- conglomerate that can be broken up and sold for pieces to unlock higher multiples in the market.
Now, instead of the activist hedge fund treatment, it will get the private equity treatment, where they'll break the company up but keep the name and spin the company back out in 5-10 years once they've sold off the divisions that can quickly make the investors money.
in the end the market determined that the activists were right and the company was way to big and diversified to be effective.
Sadly instead of the public benefiting from this breakup due to a bump in the share price and dividends being paid out from the breakup it will be a consortium of banks and other companies that benefit from this.
Westinghouse negotiated fixed price contracts to construct nuclear reactors and Toshiba provided financial guarantees, so they ended up on the hook for massive cost over-runs. In 2017 alone, Westinghouse reported an annual loss of $9bn. and declared themselves bankrupt.
Toshiba had to sell a load of businesses over the years to escape the Westinghouse black hole and repair their balance sheet.
Cameco is the second largest uranium producer in the world. Brookfield Renewable Partners owns and operates a lot of power generation. Both are Canadian where there is a huge pool of both power generation and specifically nuclear power generation talent and experience. As an example until 2016 Canada had the largest operator nuclear power facility in the world, several provinces are currently in the planning phases of SMRs, and Canada will be financing CANDU reactors in Romania.
It's safe to say they see some sort of advantageous vertical integration of the supply chain, as well as believing regulatory and economic outlooks being good.
This is WILD because it came up as part of an agreement 20 years ago because it was discovered that Toshiba had put a backdoor on all Toshiba hard drives. Basically the US told Japan, either we release what Toshiba did, or you put our Navy guys (I only know navy but probably other branches too) on your boats.
Japan agreed, the scandel went away and Toshiba was left to rot as a zombie company.
Maybe your financial reason got them where they are today, but Toshiba was effectivly dead 20 years ago when they screwed over the US and Japanese governments at the same time, crazy that Japan let them zombify for 20 years.
"backdoor on all Toshiba hard drives" is an enormous security concern for all world citizens.
Importantly though they said it was sending data back, THAT was the issue because the navy had used their drives, so basically stealing us gov data.
Military staff would never lie and are also known to be very tech savvy. Story seems legit to me.
perfect! :) The story makes no sense, but as always with conspiracy theories there is a small grain of truth in there. Asianometry: Toshiba’s Big Technology Export Scandal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaRyqAVIkwI
https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/Lenovo-banned-Intelligence... https://thehackernews.com/search/label/Lenovo%20Backdoor%20M...
But also keep in mind the NSA has been backdooring and infiltrating both domestic and foreign commercial entities & critical infrastructure for decades. We can't pretend this is shocking.
How can we know this is true, and how would a HDD backdoor even work? What's the exploit here?
Does the firmware on the HDD controller magically connect to the internet via the SATA cable and through the host controller to siphon your data to the Japanese alphabet agencies?
Sounds pretty absurd.
That's ... what I just said.
>An attacker with access to the firmware could manipulate it to create a backdoor.
You can create backdoors for every device, not just HDDs, why should Toshiba be liable here? iPhones and Androids have tonnes of exploits written for them? Are we extorting them too for SW bugs that lead to vulnerabilities?
>This might involve modifying the firmware to allow remote control, unauthorized data access, or other malicious actions
Remote access how? Can I talk to the exploited firmware of your HDD via the internet while magically bypassing firewalls and the OS security? Is that a technically feasible thing or are you just speculating without background knowledge?
Sounds like first you'd need to compromise the firewalls, OS, SATA controller and network layers to let outsiders talk to the compromised HDD firmware via the internet and if the attacker already has that kind of remote access to your system, then you're already screwed and compromised and the HDD firmware is the least of your worries.
Even if remote HDD firmware vulnerabilities are not technically feasible and only work if you get your hands on the HDD, in cyber-secvurity world, if your HDD/laptop/PC is in the hands of the attacker, then you can consider it already compromised regardless of HDD firmware security.
It all sounds like a nothing burgher or pure FUD.
2. That still means you need physical acces to the victim's system to exploit, nothing that can be exploited remotely.
If Toshiba created a malicous firmware with a backdoor they would be liable for the backdoor.
That's a big IF. Where's the proof for that though? Or is it like the imaginary WMDs in Irak?
Backdoors are usually cleverly disguised software bugs specifically to give you deniability if you ever get caught. It's not like the Jupânese agencies would put their names and signatures in the backdoor's firmare image.
I can tell you though, 1,000% EVERY Japanese sdf ship has at least 2 US Navy person on board when deployed. That's a fact.
The US intelligence apparatus discovers that a Japanese company has backdoored all its hard drives which are apparently also installed on USN vessels.
The US, out of benevolence for this non-US company's reputation, I guess, decides to agree to a secret deal with its ally.
The secret deal is that US Navy personnel will be put onto Japanese naval vessels, which in no way remedies the problem of backdoored hard drives that supposedly exist. Random JMSDF captains know the details of this supposedly secret deal and discuss it freely without consequence.
Imagine believing this.
Japan has been a friendly country and valuable Pacific strategic ally for decades. What exactly is the US supposedly gaining here?
Maybe it's more likely there's an exchange program between allied Navies, like there is with dozens of other countries??
> I only got told the story by the commander while we were drinking in our state rooms in the JSDF ship, maybe he was lying?
But you're presenting it here with way more credence than that justifies. This is a conspiracy theory and unsurprisingly this is exactly how they get spread.
1: https://cdn-ak.f.st-hatena.com/images/fotolife/t/topisyu/201... / https://archive.is/4Dyzj
> The bid was intended to allow Toshiba to sever ties with overseas activist shareholders, who it says were only seeking short-term returns.
They could be wonderful design but manufactured with some less than stellar materials. Things like that.
Around 3 years in I bought a new HP dv9700 on eBay and it failed within 6 months. HP declined to replace because it was from overseas. I ended up back on the "trusty Toshiba" which yeah I'll be honest it wasn't that bad for a cheap $1000 laptop.
That came at the price of a lot of custom drivers that would rarely make it to the windows defaults, complete lack of backward (sometimes forward) compatibility, and abysmal linux support.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/tarhuni1/
This combination of facts seems extremely unlikely.
> Tanaka Seisakusho (田中製作所, Tanaka Engineering Works) was the first company established by Tanaka Hisashige, one of the most original and productive inventor-engineers during the Tokugawa / Edo period. Established in July 1875, it was the first Japanese company to manufacture telegraph equipment. It also manufactured switches, and miscellaneous electrical and communications equipment.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanaka_Seisakusho
appliance /əˈplʌɪəns/ noun 1. a device or piece of equipment designed to perform a specific task. "electrical and gas appliances" 2. BRITISH a fire engine. "three fire appliances were rushed to the scene"
I'm guessing it's electrically performing a specific task, i.e. an electric appliance.
Something new here or are you just wasting our time?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37597214
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37606935