Who is the fraud, Unifi or Citron research?

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Terry Kennedy

Well-Known Member
Jun 25, 2015
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New York City
www.glaver.org
Open your minds. The only thing ethically-challenged here is every global corporation in the world.
I'm probably going to regret wading into this... :rolleyes:
Corporate ownership is a dogs breakfast, with the majority seemingly held by the "Hainan Province Cihang Charity Foundation", which, given the lack of information, could very will be a Lotus Garden version of the Cheyenne Sporting Society.
Nothing new here. IKEA has been doing this for nearly 75 years.
2017 saw further expansion in the air travel and lodging sectors, completely in keeping with its history. But '17 also saw the purchase of a 10% stake in Deutsche Bank, becoming its single largest shareholder, followed by forays into Manhattan real estate and the purchase of hi-tech electronics distributor Ingram-Micro for $6 billion.

Say what? How the heck does Ingram-Micro mesh with the portfolio? When asked, the company explains this will allow foreign companies access to the Chinese market, through the HNA-owned gateway. Non-Chinese companies will still face a stiff import tariff, but the door is open...
This has been done here in the US (and generally failed) - people may remember "MumbleCorp - a Diversified Corporation" and "FrobWorks - We don't make the stuff you buy - we make it better".

As I said above "and generally failed". At one time Twinkies and ICBM guidance systems were made by the same company. Either the Chinese think they can do conglomerates better, or they haven't learned from our examples of failure.
 

Dawg10

Associate
Dec 24, 2016
220
114
43
Q1 update is out. The unaudited numbers are pretty much meaningless; going to have to wait for the auditors report. The near $600 million said to be held offshore raises both eyebrows. Again.

Oh no! Some of the magic is gone... The initial and ongoing magic was the "Community", but maybe not so much, ever...

Q: Okay. And then for my follow-on, in the 8-K filing this morning, it looks like you substantially reduced the number of registered users for the Ubiquiti community board from 4 million to 609,000. Could you help me align or help me understand the alignment between the number of registered users to how I should start thinking about the revenue, especially given that you are starting to deliver $1 billion in revenue?

A: Yes, sounds like your shorts are getting nervous. So I don't think that number is really that critical of an observation. Our IR people mixed up user sessions and total users. But regardless, our user community is more engaged than ever. We have more stories, requests for more features, more -- just excitement overall. And if you compare it to, say, 2 or 3 years back, where our R&D wasn't executing at nearly as high a level, it's a huge improvement in my opinion in the quality of the community engagement.

When asked: "Around engineering and the distributed model and access to talent and how that's going."

The meat of the answer: "And you take something like AmpliFi. Now AmpliFi wasn't executed all that well. We could have done it a lot better, but it was a 7- or 8-person team. And I was just looking at something like the Android downloads. And we're -- it appears we're even selling at a higher clip than eero, which is a start-up company, which is incredible in my opinion because they have 200 employees and tens of millions of dollars of funding. And we have 8 guys and we stuck with our Ubiquiti business model blueprint and we've gotten incredible leverage.

The Magic is back!! 8 guys out producing a competitor using 200!! Freaking Amazing!!

RJP concludes: And we have to do a better job of selecting engineers that fit our culture. But as long as we can do that, I think the future is very bright.

Cryptic at best; he already seems to be doing a beyond-World Class job with his few engineers. And what exactly is the UBNT culture? I can speculate on several fronts, none of them complimentary. Has anyone actually met a UBNT engineer? Seriously; I'd like to learn about the "culture".

On product development: In addition, we believe we have a very good system now with UNMS and UMobile, where these new CPEs can be essentially cloned and deployed in the field within seconds or maybe a couple of minutes. And we're going to rally some evangelism around that is the plan in the next few months. And so I'm excited about that opportunity.

It seems evangelism is still driving sales, even though his sales force has shrunk from 4 million to 609,000. Good thing he's excited... I wonder what the real numbers are? All of them.

Here's a good one to close out Q&A:

Q: Okay. And just a quick clarification on the guidance plans. Are you going to be giving full year targets and then just not giving quarterly guidance or is it still...

A: Correct. So at the end of this fiscal year, we'll stop quarterly guidance. And from that point forward, we'll just be giving the next fiscal year guidance.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Lets just answer questions once/year going forward.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
 

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
848
402
63
USA
ioflood.com
Q1 update is out. The unaudited numbers are pretty much meaningless; going to have to wait for the auditors report. The near $600 million said to be held offshore raises both eyebrows. Again.

Oh no! Some of the magic is gone... The initial and ongoing magic was the "Community", but maybe not so much, ever...

Q: Okay. And then for my follow-on, in the 8-K filing this morning, it looks like you substantially reduced the number of registered users for the Ubiquiti community board from 4 million to 609,000. Could you help me align or help me understand the alignment between the number of registered users to how I should start thinking about the revenue, especially given that you are starting to deliver $1 billion in revenue?

A: Yes, sounds like your shorts are getting nervous. So I don't think that number is really that critical of an observation. Our IR people mixed up user sessions and total users. But regardless, our user community is more engaged than ever. We have more stories, requests for more features, more -- just excitement overall. And if you compare it to, say, 2 or 3 years back, where our R&D wasn't executing at nearly as high a level, it's a huge improvement in my opinion in the quality of the community engagement.

When asked: "Around engineering and the distributed model and access to talent and how that's going."

The meat of the answer: "And you take something like AmpliFi. Now AmpliFi wasn't executed all that well. We could have done it a lot better, but it was a 7- or 8-person team. And I was just looking at something like the Android downloads. And we're -- it appears we're even selling at a higher clip than eero, which is a start-up company, which is incredible in my opinion because they have 200 employees and tens of millions of dollars of funding. And we have 8 guys and we stuck with our Ubiquiti business model blueprint and we've gotten incredible leverage.

The Magic is back!! 8 guys out producing a competitor using 200!! Freaking Amazing!!

RJP concludes: And we have to do a better job of selecting engineers that fit our culture. But as long as we can do that, I think the future is very bright.

Cryptic at best; he already seems to be doing a beyond-World Class job with his few engineers. And what exactly is the UBNT culture? I can speculate on several fronts, none of them complimentary. Has anyone actually met a UBNT engineer? Seriously; I'd like to learn about the "culture".

On product development: In addition, we believe we have a very good system now with UNMS and UMobile, where these new CPEs can be essentially cloned and deployed in the field within seconds or maybe a couple of minutes. And we're going to rally some evangelism around that is the plan in the next few months. And so I'm excited about that opportunity.

It seems evangelism is still driving sales, even though his sales force has shrunk from 4 million to 609,000. Good thing he's excited... I wonder what the real numbers are? All of them.

Here's a good one to close out Q&A:

Q: Okay. And just a quick clarification on the guidance plans. Are you going to be giving full year targets and then just not giving quarterly guidance or is it still...

A: Correct. So at the end of this fiscal year, we'll stop quarterly guidance. And from that point forward, we'll just be giving the next fiscal year guidance.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Lets just answer questions once/year going forward.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Well, you've convinced me.

Time to put my money where my mouth is.

Screenshot_20171113-151739.jpg
 
Jan 4, 2014
89
13
8
Q1 update is out. The unaudited numbers are pretty much meaningless; going to have to wait for the auditors report. The near $600 million said to be held offshore raises both eyebrows. Again.

Oh no! Some of the magic is gone... The initial and ongoing magic was the "Community", but maybe not so much, ever...

Q: Okay. And then for my follow-on, in the 8-K filing this morning, it looks like you substantially reduced the number of registered users for the Ubiquiti community board from 4 million to 609,000. Could you help me align or help me understand the alignment between the number of registered users to how I should start thinking about the revenue, especially given that you are starting to deliver $1 billion in revenue?

A: Yes, sounds like your shorts are getting nervous. So I don't think that number is really that critical of an observation. Our IR people mixed up user sessions and total users. But regardless, our user community is more engaged than ever. We have more stories, requests for more features, more -- just excitement overall. And if you compare it to, say, 2 or 3 years back, where our R&D wasn't executing at nearly as high a level, it's a huge improvement in my opinion in the quality of the community engagement.

When asked: "Around engineering and the distributed model and access to talent and how that's going."

The meat of the answer: "And you take something like AmpliFi. Now AmpliFi wasn't executed all that well. We could have done it a lot better, but it was a 7- or 8-person team. And I was just looking at something like the Android downloads. And we're -- it appears we're even selling at a higher clip than eero, which is a start-up company, which is incredible in my opinion because they have 200 employees and tens of millions of dollars of funding. And we have 8 guys and we stuck with our Ubiquiti business model blueprint and we've gotten incredible leverage.

The Magic is back!! 8 guys out producing a competitor using 200!! Freaking Amazing!!

RJP concludes: And we have to do a better job of selecting engineers that fit our culture. But as long as we can do that, I think the future is very bright.

Cryptic at best; he already seems to be doing a beyond-World Class job with his few engineers. And what exactly is the UBNT culture? I can speculate on several fronts, none of them complimentary. Has anyone actually met a UBNT engineer? Seriously; I'd like to learn about the "culture".

On product development: In addition, we believe we have a very good system now with UNMS and UMobile, where these new CPEs can be essentially cloned and deployed in the field within seconds or maybe a couple of minutes. And we're going to rally some evangelism around that is the plan in the next few months. And so I'm excited about that opportunity.

It seems evangelism is still driving sales, even though his sales force has shrunk from 4 million to 609,000. Good thing he's excited... I wonder what the real numbers are? All of them.

Here's a good one to close out Q&A:

Q: Okay. And just a quick clarification on the guidance plans. Are you going to be giving full year targets and then just not giving quarterly guidance or is it still...

A: Correct. So at the end of this fiscal year, we'll stop quarterly guidance. And from that point forward, we'll just be giving the next fiscal year guidance.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Lets just answer questions once/year going forward.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Again, you are here bashing ubnt, and not bringing news.
Seems you're here to help your shorting friends..

To put it bluntly : take a piss buddy !

send from a mobile device, so typo's are to be expected :)
 
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Jan 4, 2014
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Dawg10

Associate
Dec 24, 2016
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still at it buddy ?
you fail to mention 90% of MIPS ap's have this issue
Which accounts for "most if not all Ubiquiti routers and AP's", according to one expert.

UBNT routers and AP's have been vulnerable for over a decade, have known about it, and have done nothing. Next up are revelations of how the equipment has been exploited and by whom.

And, yes, Robert Pera continues to treat UBNT as his personal bank.
 
Jan 4, 2014
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Which accounts for "most if not all Ubiquiti routers and AP's", according to one expert.

UBNT routers and AP's have been vulnerable for over a decade, have known about it, and have done nothing. Next up are revelations of how the equipment has been exploited and by whom.

And, yes, Robert Pera continues to treat UBNT as his personal bank.
this goes for all mips based routers and AP's

you cant seem to relativate your personal hate again UBNT.

take your crap somewhere else please

here some other affected devices :

The following table groups devices together by vendor and reports on percentages of binaries
that incorporate essential hardening features. To illustrate how well, or poorly, vendors have
done in comparison to Linux equivalents, the first line item represents statistics for a default
installation of the 2016 Linux Long Term Support distribution 16.04.
Brand Model Count ASLR (%)
Non Exec Stack
(%)
RELRO
(%)
Stack Guards
(%) CPU
Ubuntu
Desktop -
Reference 16.04, 64bit 5379 23.21 98.99 100 79.43 x86
Asus rt-ac55u 334 0 0 1.8 0 MIPS
D-LINK dir-850l 118 0 0 3.39 0 MIPS
D-LINK dir-880l 128 0 99.22 7.81 0 ARM
Linksys e2500 201 8.79 0 3.48 0 MIPS
Linksys ea6100 414 5.82 0 0.97 0 MIPS
Linksys ea6900 468 2.50 0.21 1.28 0 MIPS
Linksys ea8500 484 2.26 99.79 2.07 0 ARM
Netgear WNDR4300v2 228 1.52 0 2.19 0 MIPS
Netgear r6100 170 1.96 0 2.35 0 MIPS
Netgear r7000 457 0 99.78 21.44 13.43 ARM
The ‘Non Exec Stack’ column shows that across all MIPS-based devices, only one binary
correctly, from a basic security standpoint, marks the stack as non-executable. By contrast,
ARM binaries mark the stack segment as RW almost all of the time. Per our paper on this MIPS
issue we expect the ARM toolchain, and ARM Kernel, do not suffer from the situations we
documented on MIPS.
Whereas MIPS lacked basic stack-based DEP we found that nearly all the devices, both MIPS
and ARM, generally lack other basic security and safety hygiene, such as ASLR and Stack
Guards. Both of these defensive techniques have been widely known and deployed for over a
decade. The data above shows that home routers are soft targets in comparison to the security
hygiene present in modern desktop operating systems (e.g. Windows 10, OS X 10.13, and
non-default, hardened, builds of Linux).
The data shows poor use of application armoring features across the board for these home
router embedded devices: stack guards are almost completely missing (besides just 13.43% of
binaries on the Netgear r7000)
Asus rt-ac88u 430 1.926 99.07 2.79 0.93 ARM
D-LINK dir-842 129 01 0 4.65 5.47 MIPS
D-LINK dir-890l 140 0 99.29 7.14 0 ARM
D-LINK dir-895l 138 0 99.28 7.25 0 ARM
Linksys wrt1900ac 503 4.15 99.8 3.18 0.62 ARM
Linksys wrt32x 139 4.05 100 94.96 81.58 ARM
Netgear r8000 440 0 100 22.05 13.65 ARM
Netgear r9000 477 .44 100 17.82 0 ARM
Netgear rbr50 340 .98 100 2.94 0 ARM
Netgear xr500 421 07 99.76 6.89 9.28 ARM
Synology rt2600ac 1835 6.72 99.56 16.68 5.48 ARM
TP-Link ac1750 175 0 0 3.43 0 MIPS
TP-Link ad7200 276 0 99.64 3.62 0 ARM
TP-Link c3150_v2 160 0 99.38 14.37 0 ARM
Trendnet tew-827dru_v2 197 0 0 77.66 0 MIPS
The Consumer Reports home router models we analyzed were made up of 3 ARM and 7 MIPS
devices (30% ARM, 70% MIPS). The firmware we analyzed from the ‘other 2018’ lists we
collected were made up of 15 ARM and 3 MIPS devices (83.33% ARM, 16.67% MIPS). Thus
bringing the total devices analyzed to 28 home router models, made up of 18 ARM and 10 MIPS
systems (64.3% ARM, 35.7% MIPS). Although the ratio of ARM to MIPS devices increased, the
overall use of basic hardening features was still poor. The Linksys wrt32x did better on basic
safety and security build hygiene than the routers in the Consumer Reports article with the most
consistent use of stack guards, RELRO, and non-executable stack marking, making it the best
in class among its peers for security features. The Linksys wrt32x was still missing ASLR almost
entirely, so there is still room for improvement. The router with the highest usage of ASLR
across binaries was the Linksys e2500 from the first group, with a still extremely poor 9% ASLR.
Given that ASLR is an easy safety hygiene feature to accomplish for binary applications, this is
a major industry-wide security lapse.
One method CITL uses internally to visualize comparisons between different devices is radar
charts. These charts show the percentage of binaries in the firmware image that have particular
hardening features, and plotting more than one at a time allows easy comparison. Here are two
samples from the above data that show the two extremes. Larger areas covered represent a
binary that is better hardened. The following plot shows the three best secured routers out of all
models that we reviewed.
 
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Dawg10

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Dec 24, 2016
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UBNT routers and AP's are all MIPS based.

MIPS has a stack execution vulnerability.

All UBNT routers and APs are vulnerable.

Do you work for UBNT?
 
Jan 4, 2014
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UBNT routers and AP's are all MIPS based.

MIPS has a stack execution vulnerability.

All UBNT routers and APs are vulnerable.

Do you work for UBNT?
wouldnt be very kosjer if i did and didn't tell you now would it ?

just hate people posting stuf under under false pretences
 

Dawg10

Associate
Dec 24, 2016
220
114
43
I'll just work on the assumption that a large part of your income is derived from the sale and support of Ubiquiti products. Evangelicals usually have an embedded financial interest.

You obviously haven't read the entire thread; if you had you would understand that I have no bias towards either UBNT or Robert Pera. I admire Pera for having the balls to make billions of dollars any way he can; he likely made more money in the time it took to brush my teeth this morning than I will all year. And I own and use UBNT products; just yesterday I upgraded a 2-year old ERL to a shiny new ER-8. Good stuff.

Having said that, the Ubiquiti Corporation is cooking the books: the numbers just don't add up to real-life experience. RJP controls the board and the narrative; there will be no-one to blame but him when the crap hits the fan, just as it hit the fan when UBNT sold into the Iran embargo, to which the company was found guilty and fined for, basically, being stupid.

And before anyone brings up the various accounting firms that UBNT has employed over the years; it's the accounting firms job to keep the client out of the line of fire. They're paid to keep people like Pera out of jail. Accounting firms are just as corrupt as the corporations they represent. Doubt me? Look up the news article where the Big 4 accounting co's all pled guilty to collusion for trying to rig the bidding process for Italian government contracts. If I remember correctly, 3 of the 4 represented UBNT at one time or another.

So carry on with your evangelism; it's a good product put out by a company run by a despot. Every false prophet has evangelicals singing their praises.
 

capn_pineapple

Active Member
Aug 28, 2013
356
80
28
Guys, this thread has devolved from fact based information to opinionated BS and personal attacks that bring nothing to the table.
@Patrick Could you close this thread please?
 
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PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
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Using your own logic, @Dawg10, it appears that we are required to assume your income depends on a large short-site interest in UBNT stock.

Really - your posts are over-the-top conspiracy theory stuff, a few unrelated facts leading to wildly speculative conclusions of fraud, cooking the books and misconduct. Tying the MIPS security issue to your wild tale was the last straw for me - a wild grasp at an industry-wide problem that you somehow ascribe to sinister intent at UBNT. You've jumped the shark.

I'm not at all sure this is really the right kind of content for STH's forums. You should probably give it a rest.
 

Dawg10

Associate
Dec 24, 2016
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Tying the MIPS security issue to your wild tale was the last straw for me - a wild grasp at an industry-wide problem that you somehow ascribe to sinister intent at UBNT. You've jumped the shark.
You will kindly note that I did no such thing. Any relationship to "sinister intent" was created by @audio catalyst; my bringing the MIPS vulnerability into the conversation was to introduce yet another problem on the horizon for UBNT.

You, and others, disagreeing with my viewpoint is a healthy dialogue. To suppress this is to introduce censorship to the forum.

/edit: to re-iterate yet again, I own zero UBNT stock and care not whether the stock price rises or falls. My money is tied up in real estate, oil companies and banks; tech stocks are far too fragile for my tastes.

/edit2: @audio catalyst , you are not a casual observer. You and your company have several hundred (12,000?) Ubiquiti devices under management, as per user audio-catalyst on the Ubiquiti forum. This renders your comments, obviously, as tainted.

/edit3: Very interesting comments from current & former UBNT employees.

Any former Ubiquity employees here? Considering interviewing : Ubiquiti

tl;dr: common theme is "CEO is a nut job"
 
Last edited:

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
1,394
511
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my bringing the MIPS vulnerability into the conversation was to introduce yet another problem on the horizon for UBNT.
Regardless of your intentions, bringing in an unrelated problem to the thread - that of financial impropriety - left me with the impression of either mud-slinging or a Gish Gallop, neither of which reflected well on your posts, and I suspect PigLover felt a similar reaction.

(No skin in this game whatsoever, I just don't like highly sensationalised rumours masquerading as facts)

Guys, this thread has devolved from fact based information to opinionated BS and personal attacks that bring nothing to the table.
@Patrick Could you close this thread please?
Tentatively seconded.
 

Dawg10

Associate
Dec 24, 2016
220
114
43
Thank you for clarifying how PigLover feels.

STH forums, like all forums, are full of "opinionated BS". You seem good with that. As for personal attacks, I have a very thick skin, especially when it comes to evangelicals of any flavor.

Let's not lose sight of this fact: there's a SEC investigation yet to conclude... An investigation started several months prior to UBNT acknowledging (Feb/18) they were under review. Speaking of BS, publishing that Fact in any of the SEC filings or press releases must have conflicted with RJP's agenda.

Let's wait and see what the SEC says.
 

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
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Y'all are about to discover some things...
You started warning us about Ubiquiti almost exactly 3 years ago. I believe, the most important claim being that their stock was overpriced because the fundamentals were a fiction, that people had uncovered this truth already, and the SEC was hot on the trail.

I think that's a fair assessment of the short side argument 36 months ago, when the stock was trading at between $55 - $65 / share.

It's now trading, 36 months later, for $200 / share.

Is this the ordinary and expected outcome 36 months after a company has the SEC hot on their trail with clear and convincing evidence of widespread fraud? If so, sign me up to your tip line so I can invest in more companies engaging in "fraud".