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How to become the sole owner of your PC [pdf]

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Re: How to become the sole owner of your PC [pdf]

#101

Post by devicenull »

4ad wrote: post #72
13of40 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they really intended it to be a backdoor-ish sort of thing Occam's razor says they really just sell a ton of CPUs to huge datacenters and wanted to solve the problem of having to have some tech go out and physically reset a machine when it misbehaves. If you've ever accidentally powered down a machine that's sitting in some lights-out facility in Northern Alabraska, this kind of technology is a godsend. Now I'm not…

No, Occam razor says that if all you you want to do is LOM, you put an embedded computer running Linux and ssh, connected only to to power and to the console, and nothing else, not a SPARC (?!?) core running proprietary code that does way, way more than just implement support for LOM, and which has access to all memory and CPU state.

You're describing how most IPMI controllers are implemented. This sounds great and all, until you realize the vendors don't bother to keep things up to date, and run all sorts of extra shit so they have a bigger feature list.

Re: How to become the sole owner of your PC [pdf]

#102

Post by amelius »

zanny wrote: post #25
keyle wrote: post #10

I've never heard of this before. This feels like science-fiction. You'd think this would have blown over the internet 50 times over? What can 'they' do with this?

It is like cell phone radios with DMA access. Anything they want, in practice. If you are buying any computer commercially it always has backdoored hardware with a wholly proprietary coprocessor with networking and memory access.

> has backdoored hardware with a wholly proprietary coprocessor with networking and memory access.

Well, they don't even need a separate coprocessor. They could just swap out the registers of the main CPU, and use the full power of that CPU. Basically, it would work like context-switching works in a multithreading environment.

Re: How to become the sole owner of your PC [pdf]

#103

Post by amelius »

vonklaus wrote: post #19
setra wrote: post #5

Just more evidence that modern CPU designs need to die, and that a libre alternative is required.

I mean, they don't need to die , but it would be nice if we had a Steve Wozniak archetype instead of a Steve Jobs running things like this.

My vote goes to Richard Stallman.

Re: How to become the sole owner of your PC [pdf]

#104

Post by 4ad »

devicenull wrote: post #101
4ad wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Occam razor says that if all you you want to do is LOM, you put an embedded computer running Linux and ssh, connected only to to power and to the console, and nothing else, not a SPARC (?!?) core running proprietary code that does way, way more than just implement support for LOM, and which has access to all memory and CPU state.

You're describing how most IPMI controllers are implemented. This sounds great and all, until you realize the vendors don't bother to keep things up to date, and run all sorts of extra shit so they have a bigger feature list.

If only IPMI worked this way!

Yes, they use Linux, but, as you say, they run a bunch of other crap that's old and buggy, and the implementation of the protocol itself is not stellar.

How many bugs were found in IPMI implementations vs. ssh over the last 5 years?

We don't need IPMI, we really only need ssh, and a console that allows setting things up (like Open Firmware on RISC machines).

We don't need a new protocol for remotely accessing our machines, when we can remotely export the plain old machine console securely.

Some vendors do work the way I described, at least for their RISC offerings, although, for example, the Oracle ILOM runs some Java web server crap by default. But at least you can turn it off and use pure ssh! No IPMI.

Re: How to become the sole owner of your PC [pdf]

#105

Post by mhurron »

4ad wrote: post #72
13of40 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they really intended it to be a backdoor-ish sort of thing Occam's razor says they really just sell a ton of CPUs to huge datacenters and wanted to solve the problem of having to have some tech go out and physically reset a machine when it misbehaves. If you've ever accidentally powered down a machine that's sitting in some lights-out facility in Northern Alabraska, this kind of technology is a godsend. Now I'm not…

No, Occam razor says that if all you you want to do is LOM, you put an embedded computer running Linux and ssh, connected only to to power and to the console, and nothing else, not a SPARC (?!?) core running proprietary code that does way, way more than just implement support for LOM, and which has access to all memory and CPU state.

"Never attribute to malice that which can equally be explained by stupidity."

Intel is a large company, with lots of engineers, both hardware and software, managers, marketers and project managers. Some really stupid decisions will come out of simple scope creep and someones pet project suddenly becoming the next product.

Outside of evidence of actual malevolent intention, what you have here is easily a project gone really really weird.

Re: How to become the sole owner of your PC [pdf]

#106

Post by GrumpyYoungMan »

unusximmortalis wrote: post #57
zanny wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is like cell phone radios with DMA access. Anything they want, in practice. If you are buying any computer commercially it always has backdoored hardware with a wholly proprietary coprocessor with networking and memory access.

Can you please share links of evidence of this? Thank you

See http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_syste...

Every brand of smartphone has this secondary firmware, entirely separate from the primary OS. Without it, you can't connect to the cellular network.

Re: How to become the sole owner of your PC [pdf]

#108

Post by dublinben »

Mikushi wrote: post #74
kecks wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy a Libreboot T400? It comes without Intel ME and is FSF-certified: https://minifree.org/product/libreboot-t400/ It is pretty expensive for the amount of performance you get, but you are getting a fully documented, auditable and free product. It comes with instructions on how to update/build/flash/modify your firmware. You're also supporting the Libreboot project.

Wow, thanks for introducing me to this. Been wanting a new laptop for coding and writing and I would be 100% behind something of that nature. Have you had the chance of using it?

I have never used the T400, but I am writing this comment on the similar X200 with Libreboot. It's a great little machine for basic tasks like coding and writing.

Re: How to become the sole owner of your PC [pdf]

#110

Post by TorKlingberg »

zanny wrote: post #25
keyle wrote: post #10

I've never heard of this before. This feels like science-fiction. You'd think this would have blown over the internet 50 times over? What can 'they' do with this?

It is like cell phone radios with DMA access. Anything they want, in practice. If you are buying any computer commercially it always has backdoored hardware with a wholly proprietary coprocessor with networking and memory access.

I used to write software for the cellular radio baseband. I certainly didn't put any backdoors in, but of course it would be possible. I don't think there is any conspiracy though, shared memory is just efficient and convenient for shuffling lots of data. Phone designers are not really trying to have security barriers between hardware components, and on many phones the baseband is inside the same chip as the main processor.
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