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Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

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Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#71

Post by userbinator »

snailmailman wrote: post #60
JohannMac wrote: post #29

Common to have unique SN in a processor. Let the SW vendors do copy protection too. E.g. at Sonos we used them to associate with the software signed certificate such that you couldn't run a given Players software on another Player without the same SN. When making products via contract manufactures, especially in China, it was a wise procedure.

When I built my pc the cpu came with some free game or game coupon or something. It wasn’t in the box, I instead had to download and run some AMD software that verified that I was in fact using the CPU. I’m under the impression that it detected my specific CPU not just make/model but some sort of unique ID. Presumably this stops people from claiming the code and reselling the cpu,(or at least without reselling it as…

There are a lot of unique identifiers in a PC, not just on the CPU but various ones in the motherboard (BIOS) too...

from spinning up a VM

...and you can change them, even if not easily, for a VM. AFAIK the Windows licensing/activation relies on the same uniqueness.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#72

Post by aphroz »

sn_master wrote: post #58
tehjoker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, the license keys weren't checked at a central server, there was some kind of check sum or database inside the software instead. This was wonderful for both pirates and legitimate users for when the company disappeared. I still remember a working Starcraft CD key (though it later turned out that something on the order of 01234566789 worked).

I remember my Windows XP QQWD7 serial key too. Even when central server was the default, there was usually still a way to do an offline activation. Nowadays, not anymore.

I was more a FCKGW kind of user

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#73

Post by SavantIdiot »

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #15
illys wrote: post #9

"Big Brother Inside" for just a unique id? What should we say now about Intel Management Engine?

We already know the management engine is a backdoor/botnet. No intel powered computer is secure or private.

It's amazing how in 1999 OP was worried about UID=Big Brother, but today we've all willingly handed over security and privacy to 3~5 companies, even without talking Facebook, Google or Amazon. Jeez, did everyone forget LexisNexis? They were doing this way before FAANG. But it's game over: there is no more privacy or security. We lost, they won. I give to EFF every year, but it's more and more futile every year.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#74

Post by flomo »

wmf wrote: post #25
illys wrote: post #9

"Big Brother Inside" for just a unique id? What should we say now about Intel Management Engine?

This was a self-own by Intel where they claimed that the processor serial number would be used for online authentication which was then exaggerated to "the processor serial number will be a super-cookie sent in every HTTP request" which does sound pretty big-brotherish. The ME, on the other hand, is obviously good since it "allows" you to watch 4K Netflix on your PC.

Intel did release a browser plugin/activex which claimed to expose the processor serial number to websites. But this was such a scandal that it almost immediately disappeared, along with the documentation, so I never found out how it actually worked.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#75

Post by marcan_42 »

I'd forgotten tech reporting was just as bad in 1999 as it is today. Here's the important part missing from the article: that serial number is available from userspace, and cannot be intercepted by the kernel in any way. They provided a way to disable it, but not to report, control, or intercept how it is accessed. It is returned by the unprivileged, untrappable* CPUID instruction.

Every single UEFI computer sold today has a unique serial number (GUID). There are MAC addresses. There are HDD serial numbers. There are zillions of unique identifiers accessible to the operating system. Various copy protection schemes use one or more of these. But what they all have in common is that they are under the control of the OS. A privacy-conscious OS can forbid access to these identifiers for userspace applications, or can fake them to something else. This is how e.g. sandbox environments like the App Store can force apps to use some kind of "advertising ID" for this stuff, and ensure that apps aren't sneakily fetching some true unique system ID.

But with the PIII serial number, userspace apps can fetch it without the OS knowing about it. And the disable bit is a one-time operation, so it is not possible to grant serial number access to some apps and not others. This leads to a situation where any arbitrary unprivileged userspace app can uniquely identify your machine, and where vendors relying on this feature might compel you to leave it enabled (e.g. DRM). Now random apps running under an untrusted user can fingerprint your machine, just because you want to watch Netflix.

And that is why this design was utterly broken and a privacy nightmare. Not because it's a unique ID. We have tons of those.

* VMs can trap CPUID, but of course VM support came later anyway.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#76

Post by autoexec »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #73
PurpleFoxy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already know the management engine is a backdoor/botnet. No intel powered computer is secure or private.

It's amazing how in 1999 OP was worried about UID=Big Brother, but today we've all willingly handed over security and privacy to 3~5 companies, even without talking Facebook, Google or Amazon. Jeez, did everyone forget LexisNexis? They were doing this way before FAANG. But it's game over: there is no more privacy or security. We lost, they won. I give to EFF every year, but it's more and more futile every year.

I remember a time when people circulated lists of software that phoned home calling them out as spyware for collecting nothing more than our IP addresses. These says everything wants to connect to the internet. The EFF is still one of those groups I have no reservations donating to, but yeah, it feels like we're only going in the wrong direction.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#77

Post by autoexec »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #24
Emendo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A software product could even "seek permission" from the vendor -- via the Internet or your modem -- each time it ran, so that the vendor would know whenever you started the program. Now it is the norm.

And better yet, whenever you complain about how invasive it is, someone will appear to take up page space to call you names for wanting things to be better.

"everybody does it so who cares!" as if the fact that everyone is exploiting you somehow makes it acceptable.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#78

Post by paranoidrobot »

rasz wrote: post #70
whoopdedo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt at the time that when Intel said "counterfeit" they really meant "clones".

What Intel meant at the time was "someone is selling our chips relabeled to a higher SKU and pocketing our cut". This happened in 1996 with criminal gang remarking 120 to 150, 133 to 166, etc, pocketing extra ~$30-50 per CPU. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsKjX6UGYUQ Intel was so pissed someone else was making money on binning they locked multiplier on later 133/166/200, all Pentium MMX and later models ending easy…

> later models ending easy overclocking.

Except the classic case of the Celeron 300a which let you go from 300Mhz to 450Mhz with a simple change of a motherboard FSB clock setting.

I was nervous when I ordered the parts - but stunned that it was so easy for me to do, and left me with a machine that was effectively faster than anything Intel was officially selling at the time.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#79

Post by kortilla »

monocasa wrote: post #69
kortilla wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With most software in that price category, the actual software is a small piece of what you’re paying for. It’s really support, custom features, etc. Additionally, the potential users that can pay have much bigger legal exposure using the pirated version and just wouldn’t risk it.

I've heard that pretty much the whole Chinese fabless scene runs on cracked EDA tools FWIW.

For sure, there is no legal risk for them.

Re: Intel PIII: Is Big Brother Inside? (1999)

#80

Post by rasz »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #78
rasz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Intel meant at the time was "someone is selling our chips relabeled to a higher SKU and pocketing our cut". This happened in 1996 with criminal gang remarking 120 to 150, 133 to 166, etc, pocketing extra ~$30-50 per CPU. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsKjX6UGYUQ Intel was so pissed someone else was making money on binning they locked multiplier on later 133/166/200, all Pentium MMX and later models ending easy…

> later models ending easy overclocking. Except the classic case of the Celeron 300a which let you go from 300Mhz to 450Mhz with a simple change of a motherboard FSB clock setting. I was nervous when I ordered the parts - but stunned that it was so easy for me to do, and left me with a machine that was effectively faster than anything Intel was officially selling at the time.

FSB (and later BCLK) overclocking is what we got left with for a while until Intel killed that too with Sandy Bridge just after introducing special upscale K series CPUs generation earlier with Nehalem. All in an effort to sell gimped parts while charging extra for the whole deal.
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