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MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

networkworld.com

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Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#31

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

ngneer wrote: post #19
aylons wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely, this is more an opinion piece than a didactic article. Here you have a more detailed write-up on the issue, including a known vulnerability and how others could be lingering: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/intels-management-engi...

Thanks. The citation describes the existence of vulnerabilities and laments the lack of transparency. While the latter is indeed lamentable, and is known to be a contributing factor in increasing risk, vulnerabilities do exist in any system, including transparent ones (e.g., OpenSSL). Still am not seeing any evidence of malice by this vendor, as "providing a full set of entrenched vulnerabilities, user espionage tool…

The important point is that in the case of OpenSSL, anyone who wanted to know could know, and plenty of people knew. Not the specific vulnerabilities, but the horrible quality of the code base was not just something that you could discover by looking at the source, it is something that plenty of people did discover. Also, obviously, anyone could in principle fix vulnerabilities they find in OpenSSL, without any need to wait for the OpenSSL project or anyone else to do anything.

Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#33

Post by jjawssd »

cryogenic_soul wrote: post #22

Here is some Russian guys having success in almost fully disabling the Intel ME. http://www.pvsm.ru/informatsionnaya-bezopasnost/262876 (you can use Google translator from the top of the page, to translate content from Russian to English)

https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner

Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#35

Post by digi_owl »

dimitar wrote: post #15
bryanlarsen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a sysadmin for a machine that you don't have physical access to, and the main OS is hosed, how do you fix it? It's a very useful feature for large enterprises, and pretty much only for them. The interesting question is why doesn't Intel charge "enterprise pricing" for the feature, just like they do for stuff like ECC?

It's probably cheaper to just ship it everywhere and enable it on enterprises

Also BYOD...

Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#36

Post by vidarh »

One of the most popular, not the. Finding precise numbers is hard, but in 2016, IDC reported worldwide PC sales of ca. 65 million units in Q1, and the market has been in decline (the Q1 2016 numbers were at 2007 levels). Meanwhile Android phones alone account for more than that every month, and while Intel does sell some CPUs for tablets etc. and other markets, it's peanuts compared to their PC sales.

So at least Android still ships in more devices.

Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#37

Post by vidarh »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #13
factorialboy wrote: post #2

Can someone ELI5 why Intel needs an OS in the processor?

If you're a sysadmin for a machine that you don't have physical access to, and the main OS is hosed, how do you fix it? It's a very useful feature for large enterprises, and pretty much only for them. The interesting question is why doesn't Intel charge "enterprise pricing" for the feature, just like they do for stuff like ECC?

IPMI.

IPMI is not integrated into the main CPU, so you don't have direct ability to control the state of the main CPU, but (depending on implementation) you'll be able to access sensor data, operate on the sensor data logs, get a console etc.

With a properly set up system it means you have a standard way to attach, request a reboot and and interact with the system remotely.

Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#39

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

I don't appreciate the degree to which this article conflates MINIX and IME.

>Google wants to remove MINIX from its internal servers

No, Google wants to remove IME from its internal servers. They don't care that it's MINIX.

>But MINIX has total and complete access to the entirety of your computer. All of it.

You mean IME.

MINIX is really cool operating system, even if it's being used for evil. But other operating systems are used for evil, too. MINIX has nothing to do with the fact that Intel put it on their secondary processors and ran a bunch of nasty services on it.

Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#40

Post by SEJeff »

vidarh wrote: post #36

One of the most popular, not the . Finding precise numbers is hard, but in 2016, IDC reported worldwide PC sales of ca. 65 million units in Q1, and the market has been in decline (the Q1 2016 numbers were at 2007 levels). Meanwhile Android phones alone account for more than that every month, and while Intel does sell some CPUs for tablets etc. and other markets, it's peanuts compared to their PC sales. So at least An…

Tron or the ETron variant are in far more machines than Linux or Minix. Think about all of the washing / drying machines or refrigerators since vaguely the 80s. Many of them run a Tron variant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project

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