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Secrets of Intel Management Engine – Hidden code in your chipset

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Re: Secrets of Intel Management Engine – Hidden code in your chipset

#3
My second thought on reading this was how can a server be PCI compliant with Intel management engine installed? but a quick search shows that Intel have thought of this: http://www.intel.co.uk/content/dam/www/public/us/en/document...

My first thought was that it seems increasingly clear that Stallman has been right all along.

Re: Secrets of Intel Management Engine – Hidden code in your chipset

#5
Wow. SPARC and Java, two things you wouldn't ever expect Intel hardware to ship with! The mention of SOAP-based protocols is also rather surprising, since they have rather high overhead, and this means ME is not just a little 8051-class MCU but almost a fully-featured PC itself...

The amount of complexity - and the opportunities to hide things in that - has increased so much compared to earlier PCs that in some ways I think the development of computer systems is headed on a rather treacherous path. When systems are so complex that no single person can understand them entirely, it's easier to make them behave against their owner's will.

Re: Secrets of Intel Management Engine – Hidden code in your chipset

#8
post #3

My second thought on reading this was how can a server be PCI compliant with Intel management engine installed? but a quick search shows that Intel have thought of this: http://www.intel.co.uk/content/dam/www/public/us/en/document... My first thought was that it seems increasingly clear that Stallman has been right all along.

> My first thought was that it seems increasingly clear that Stallman has been right all along.

The problem is that being philosophically right doesn't always mean being practically right. In order to create the perfect Stallman-esque machine, one would have to design everything from the logic chips up from scratch, because in the end, no third party can be trusted. He says this himself about the Loongson system he uses daily; he considers it a compromise but one heavily weighted in his favor.

In short, Stallman has been right all along, but there's little we can do about it from a practical standpoint.

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