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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]

#121
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An AMT exploit, if having internal access to CPU, could weaken a RNG plus anything else you can think of. Passive attacks are definitely possible with a backdoor. It just makes a component, hardware or software, do something upon certain trigger conditions. Otherwise it stays silent. Example from high-assurance field: https://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/6073/02Mar_An...

I think woodmans argument is that AMT is an active service, you should see network traffic to the management engine and such -- so firewalls/airgaps/SPI should detect and prevent tampering. I think that is a naive view of AMT, it seems far more capable, network management is just one avenue (and it's been proven difficult to comprehensively implement anyways).

> ...so firewalls/airgaps/SPI should detect and prevent tampering. I think that is a naive view of AMT...

Nope, I'm talking about scale. You'd need to signal (paint with radar, send a packet, dip the power in morse code, put the magic cookie in the root DNS server response, whatever) every target at least once prior to exploitation. But yes, stealth would certainly be a concern that would reduce the value of AMT relative to a factory backdoored RNG.

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

#122
post #74
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 a Libreboot-ed X200 and it's pretty great. Haven't tried watching videos on it, but it does web-browsing and coding just fine.

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

#123
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…

> 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. I don't get your point. If it's just about OOB management, then there are already plenty of BMC technologies out there (IPMI, ILO, ...). There is no need for AMT/ME here. Or maybe I just misunderstood how this whole thing works.

You can find IPMI on server-grade motherboards everywhere, yes. But what about thousands of laptops and PCs? That's the point of AMT - integrated with enterprise management system (like Tivoli) you can manage all the things you need on thousands of devices in your company. That's huge.

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

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My team spent a bunch of time looking at AMT as a management tool -- it adds lots of complexity and accomplishes almost nothing that cannot be done easier a half dozen other ways. The only functionality we saw any real use for was an always on VPN and remote wake up where networks block WoL. The other thing that's even stranger is Absolute Software, a little company nobody has ever heard of who somehow got every OEM…

re Absolute It seriously reads like a botnet description. I'd have believed them if they said "From the innovators behind Storm comes new endpoint protection..." https://www.absolute.com/en/about/persistence

It is pretty disturbing. We were lobbied pretty heavily to evaluate it and did some field tests as a result.

You can do some wacky shit with it. There is one mode where you can configure it to delete certain directories or files to screw around with a thief. That can be tweaked to delete files that the system needs. Those modes are persistent, and even after reformatting or replacing the boot media, the agent will reinstall and retrieve its policy file.

If you use it with Intel AMT, it can also brick the device permanently. (http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/product-brief/mobile-co...)

Everyone who tested the product had two questions: "Who is buying this?" and "How do I get this dormant code off my devices?"

Laptops aren't cheap, but they aren't expensive enough as an asset to care that much about recovery. And there are arguably better ways to safeguard data assets.

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

#126

Seems like if I really want to know what's going on at that level, I should really use something more simple, like a raspberry pi...

Why would you switch to a system that relies on NDA-protected chips when there are free ones available like the BeagleBone?

Is a BeagleBone like a raspberry pi? :)
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