181–190 of 192 posts
Yet another reason owner-controlled machines like the Talos™ II [0] are so important. Yes, it may cost a bit more up front, but what's the cost again of having your data stolen and then, especially with the older machines here, having to replace all of your hardware to boot? Plus, purchasing machines like that one not only sends a clear signal that we want backdoor-free computing, but also allows the further developm…
Q: Why preorders? Why can't I evaluate a production machine right now?
A: Although we have Talos™ II hardware in our labs, IBM has not yet released the POWER9 CPU to the general public. The POWER9 launch is scheduled for Q4 this year; we intend to make Talos™ II available to everyone shortly after POWER9 launch via our pre-order model. This model allows us to manage supply of the Talos™ II systems for Q4 shipment, and we intend to transition to a more standard ordering model once the POWER9 processor has reached general availablility (GA). Orders placed after our pre-order cutoff will not ship until 2018, and you would be missing out on the benefits of early market access to the POWER9 processor, so we strongly recommend that you place your pre-order as quickly as possible!
https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thomp...
Basically you have to trust the compiler because it compiles all code on your system, including itself. Not entirely the same, and I think the Intel trick is more nefarious.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with your overall conclusions, but I am having a hard time imagining the 'normal users' who would use remote administration... though perhaps if that were normal-for-HN users...
If you have a hard time imagining normal users who would use this, then I suggest you grow your imagination and teach users what possibilities there are .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that the ME still runs on their platforms. They are not being honest about that fact.
Actually Purism is being completely honest that they have isolated and disabled the ME while not actually removing it.
Wow all 6th, 7th and 8th gen are all vulnerable along with a bunch of Xeon processors. Even the laptop I am typing this on is vulnerable, this is going to be messy. Plus all the fun vulnerabilities like arbitrary code execution, unauthorized access to privileged content. These must be related to the blackhat talk coming up in December about hacking a turned-off computer and running unsigned code on ME [0]. Yep and th…
Does anyone have an idea to what extent macbooks are affected? Intel ME is baked in every CPU but according to The Register [0] the AMT part is not running on Apple hardware. [0]: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/01/intel_amt_me_vulner...
I'd rather have a more thorough ME test than just AMT I could run though, coupled with a statement from Apple that ME is or will be entirely neutered on Macs in the future.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually Purism is being completely honest that they have isolated and disabled the ME while not actually removing it.
No, it is not isolated and it is certainly not disabled. It must run as part of the initial platform boot; whether or not they politely ask it to shut itself down after boot is irrelevant to the core claim being made that the ME is "isolated and disabled" on their platforms.
Wow all 6th, 7th and 8th gen are all vulnerable along with a bunch of Xeon processors. Even the laptop I am typing this on is vulnerable, this is going to be messy. Plus all the fun vulnerabilities like arbitrary code execution, unauthorized access to privileged content. These must be related to the blackhat talk coming up in December about hacking a turned-off computer and running unsigned code on ME [0]. Yep and th…
> Wow all 6th, 7th and 8th gen are all vulnerable along with a bunch of Xeon processors. Do we really think older systems are magically not vulnerable to any of these? It seems more likely that they're vulnerable but old enough that they're getting ignored... and so they'll never get fixes. Intel sales slump solved? :-/
Does anyone have an idea to what extent macbooks are affected? Intel ME is baked in every CPU but according to The Register [0] the AMT part is not running on Apple hardware. [0]: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/01/intel_amt_me_vulner...
# modprobe mei_me
# modprobe mei_txe
# modprobe mei
# lsmod | grep mei
mei_me 36864 0
mei_txe 20480 0
mei 86016 2 mei_me,mei_txe
# python2 ./intel_sa00086.py
INTEL-SA-00086 Detection Tool
Copyright(C) 2017, Intel Corporation, All rights reserved
Application Version: 1.0.0.128
Scan date: 2017-11-23 20:37:48 GMT
*** Host Computer Information ***
Name: mbair
Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
Model: MacBookAir5,2
Processor Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3427U CPU @ 1.80GHz
*** Intel(R) ME Information ***
Engine: Intel(R) Management Engine
Version: 8.0.4.1441
SVN: 0
*** Risk Assessment ***
Based on the analysis performed by this tool: This system is not vulnerable.
When the HW dies, I'll most probably go for a Chromebook with Coreboot - and install Debian on it. I've had it - enough with this idiocy from Intel and AMD ; if they can't see how these "signed black boxes" are harming them, they deserve what's coming (open, and powerful enough architectures - i.MX8, RISC-V, etc).