41–50 of 132 posts
Reading this always makes me sad. It's like computing got utterly corrupted post-2008 and there's yet to be a fix. The tragedy of all this is that a 2008 laptop should be more than enough for today's needs if web development wasn't greedy and was resource aware.
Asking someone who took their last (undergraduate) architecture course more than a decade ago: Is it possible to design a motherboard that will shield the user against Intel ME / AMD PSP-induced shadiness? Would it be possible to do this without performance impact?
Reading this always makes me sad. It's like computing got utterly corrupted post-2008 and there's yet to be a fix. The tragedy of all this is that a 2008 laptop should be more than enough for today's needs if web development wasn't greedy and was resource aware.
> It's like computing got utterly corrupted post-2008 and there's yet to be a fix. The ironic thing is that OP's posted article were news from 2009. Now, a decade later, we almost expect another total Intel CPU failure every year due to all the problems the architecture had while still promising sandboxed security. But, as with all self-claimed "secure systems". If there's no audit, it cannot be seen as unsecure. Sec…
Reading this always makes me sad. It's like computing got utterly corrupted post-2008 and there's yet to be a fix. The tragedy of all this is that a 2008 laptop should be more than enough for today's needs if web development wasn't greedy and was resource aware.
I'll preface this question with the disclaimer that I'm a true believer in the mission of Coreboot/Libreboot. Playing devil's advocate, if Intel were to release the signing key for the ME, or Intel Boot Guard, wouldn't this increase the likelihood of a malicious vendor preinstalling a rootkit in hardware that uses Intel CPUs? To answer in advance regarding the likelihood of this happening. There's already been enough…
Sadly enough I think this is a good point. You could say it's the same as saying closed source software and operating systems would be better for that reason, which I wouldn't agree with at all, but this would feel somewhat different.
You would have to force GPL like sharing of modified firmware, but it seems much more involved to verify this on a vendor to vendor basis than say, finding that Lenovo ships some nefarious Windows software preinstalled. As an enthusiast you can just reflash after purchase to be sure, but the average consumer might suffer.
It sucks but the only real solution I see is to just remove these things altogether again.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does it help that they're in your basement? Are you using them for anything? If not, when will you know to switch to them? What's the threat model and what would be your signal to go start using them and abandoning your presumably more modern system, and how would you keep the software on them secure? Will you use Gentoo, given that Debian has dropped PPC?
https://voidlinux-ppc.org/
Reading this always makes me sad. It's like computing got utterly corrupted post-2008 and there's yet to be a fix. The tragedy of all this is that a 2008 laptop should be more than enough for today's needs if web development wasn't greedy and was resource aware.
Libreboot is making a strong case for using open firmware in systems, yet it supports only a limited set of mostly outdated system boards. Isn't that a sign that it failed? After so many years? Don't get me wrong, I definitely support the idea of open firmware and I would gladly adopt libreboot and replace any BIOS firmware on all of my systems. But, not a single system (Intel ME in all of them) is supported. I could…
You did read the linked article about how the Intel ME essentially makes an open firmware impossible unless/until Intel decides to help us out, right?
> Traffic is encrypted using SSL/TLS libraries, but recall that all of the major SSL/TLS implementations have had highly publicized vulnerabilities. I'm not sure this is a valid criticism...wouldn't we be more worried if they were using anything else instead?
No SSL => MITMer can definitely read your traffic trivially. Broken SSL => MITMer can possibly negotiate insecure and read your traffic anyway. MITMer can also possibly cause a denial-of-service, or get arbitrary code execution on that one chip that controls your entire CPU . If I had to choose, I would take the first option. (This precludes options like removing the IME entirely, or updating it to a version with non…
I suppose that if you broke SSL/TLS you could commandeer arbitrary AWS/GCP/Azure instances.
For that matter, do you trust SSL/TLS significantly less than SSH?
I guess I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around the idea of not using SSL/TLS.
So what are system76 & purism computers missing with their coreboot systems compared to the list of problems in this page?