91–100 of 142 posts
Any idea whether this secure enclave will work if you are running Linux? (I like the hardware, but I am more used to the Linux/GNU/gnome software)
I think it's a pity that the Touch Bar was not designed with a dedicated area that can only be rendered by the T1 processor directly. If that were the case, then network services could communicate directly with the user via the Touch Bar, authenticating themselves with cryptography that cannot be broken by anything running on the main system processor. This would have provided a truly trusted mechanism for apps to co…
Can we expect Error 53 after you spill something on the keyboard destroying Touch strip = and computer stops booting .. but you have important data on SSD that is now SOLDERED permanently to the motherboard, and Apple doesnt offer data recovery (only logic board swap at a low low price of $2/3 whole computer) so only option is independent repair shop?
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I'm guessing it's not that simple because there may be situations when the camera has power and is capturing an image (think hot-standby) but is not transmitting image data to the world outside the sensor package.
I don't want my camera to capture pictures without the LED being on, ever.
The microphone, on the other hand, is kind of a bigger deal and still has that issue.
The one thing I will say is even though Apple's software quality lately has taken a hit. Their commitment to security has only gotten stronger. The secure enclave, hardware level security, all of the things that came up with the FBI request have become a self serving prophecy for them. I applaud them for this and it looks like the MacBook Pro is going to be one of the most secure laptops around. Nothing is perfect of…
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The ARM was not bought to power the LED, it was bought in for TouchID. The camera LED is the icing, not the cake.
They have a point though. Why would there be any software that controls the LED? Is it not more secure to have it hooked up directly to the camera power line and turn them both on and off inseparably?
It would make sense for the camera itself to drive the LED, instead of the computer/drivers doing it. I don't know if the camera ICs support this or not, though -- if not, it's not really something Apple can add if they're integrating a standard camera component. On the other hand, they control the T1 entirely, so they can easily do this with the new architecture.
Not really that surprising. Your average laptop nowadays probably has more ARM cores than x86 cores. They're in all kinds of peripherials like wifi controllers, power supplies, harddisk controllers, GPU job control, heck even AMD's recent APUs come with an integrated Cortex-A5.[1] ARM cores are everywhere, people just don't know about it. [1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/6007/amd-2013-apus-to-include-...
Intel platforms also had an ARC processor (they approximately cater the same markets as ARM minus mobile) for years in the ME. AMD does the same thing with an ARM core. Practically all peripherals contain at least one programmable processor. Remote management / IPMI also usually works with an entirely separate ARM computer that's integrated with the main computers graphics unit -- basically a shared framebuffer, just…
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The basic idea is that this is an area of the system that even you as the owner cannot inspect, but I'll let others do the bulk of the explaining: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
It's interesting to me that you feel this way. Do you also object to the Secure Enclave architecture on the iPhone?
Meanwhile, I can reasonably trust, say, crypto++ and its component libraries, because I can (and when I use it, do) audit its source code. I may not be able to trust the processor that eventually compiled binary runs on, but that is another problem that several fronts (POWER8, RISC-V) are moving towards solving.
And no, at the end of the day, you have to trust someone untrustworthy with your computers. We don't have access to fabrication hardware to make them ourselves, and even if we did... the rabbit hole continues and how can you trust the fab? Instead, you minimize your risk and have the smallest surface area of exploitation possible. It is harder to make a whole CPU, whose instructions you have, operate against your will (because you can see the output and compare results) than a black box of silicon you just get cryptographic data out of.
But without source and design documentation on products I own I have no reason to believe they are anything but malicious with planted backdoors to circumvent any of my own attempts at privacy. Which makes using computers for private reasons borderline impossible without a full libreboot system.
Any idea whether this secure enclave will work if you are running Linux? (I like the hardware, but I am more used to the Linux/GNU/gnome software)
Both Windows and macOS have pretty cleanly-separable userlands. Either OS can be set to a single-app full-screen "kiosk" mode, where you boot straight into a specified app. And that app can be, say, VMWare. Running Linux.
Computers used to have BIOSes: a chip that is loaded with firmware, and exposes a standard abstract-device protocol for each device class the computer supports. It's not a far leap to imagine a stripped-down copy of Windows or macOS, running on one core of the CPU, as a modern kind of "BIOS."
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Given that iSight and Facetime HD cameras required drivers and firmware to get running under Linux, I would be positively surprised if the new camera is easier to set up, meaning I don't think it works right now. Even the existing camera support isn't 100%, with features like suspend/resume being flaky, all due to it being reverse engineered. That said, the options for developer laptops has shifted in favor of genera…
Sure, but the laptops you describe do not have secure enclave. If I want that level of security on Linux what can I do?