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from the where-there-is-a-will,-there-is-a-way dept.
In some shiny good news to us of the tinfoil hat crew, Phoronix is reporting:
Many free software advocates have been concerned by Intel's binary-only Management Engine (ME) built into the motherboards on newer generations of Intel motherboards. The good news is there is now a working, third-party approach for disabling the ME and reducing the risk of its binary blobs.
Via an open-source, third-party tool called me_cleaner it's possible to partially deblob Intel's ME firmware images by removing any unnecessary partitions from the firmware, reducing its ability to interface with the system. The me_cleaner works not only with free software firmware images like Coreboot/Libreboot but can also work with factory-blobbed images. I was able to confirm with a Coreboot developer that this program can disable the ME on older boards or devices with BootGuard and disable Secure Boot. This is all done with a Python script.
Those unfamiliar with the implications on Intel's ME for those wanting a fully-open system can read about it on Libreboot.org.
Looks like I may not have to go ARM on my next desktop build after all.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Type44Q on Sunday January 15 2017, @06:00PM
Like this article is the first I've heard about it.
Perhaps you should be reading rather than posting...