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posted by n1 on Monday May 15 2017, @07:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the phme dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Since 2008, most of Intel's chipsets have contained a tiny homunculus computer called the "Management Engine" (ME). The ME is a largely undocumented master controller for your CPU: it works with system firmware during boot and has direct access to system memory, the screen, keyboard, and network. All of the code inside the ME is secret, signed, and tightly controlled by Intel. Last week, vulnerabilities in the Active Management (AMT) module in some Management Engines have caused lots of machines with Intel CPUs to be disastrously vulnerable to remote and local attackers. While AMT can be disabled, there is presently no way to disable or limit the Management Engine in general. Intel urgently needs to provide one.

[...] EFF believes that Intel needs to provide a minimum level of transparency and user control of the Management Engines inside our computers, in order to prevent this cybersecurity disaster from recurring. Unless that happens, we are concerned that it may not be appropriate to use Intel CPUs in many kinds of critical infrastructure systems.

It's a crying shame the what the EFF says doesn't hold a whole lot of weight.

Source: The Electronic Frontier Foundation


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 15 2017, @12:16PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 15 2017, @12:16PM (#509960) Journal

    Sorry, no, I don't have a good citation. In honesty, all that I've found are marketing hype links, and links referencing that same hype. As for studying the chips, I've never even really looked at them. Again, marketing hype. I'm not aware of any actual chips on the market. And, I think that when the subject was discussed in another thread, I just took those marketer's links at face value.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday May 17 2017, @05:37AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday May 17 2017, @05:37AM (#510928) Journal

    Well checking out die layouts is kinda my thing, going back to the old 286 where you could actually see the various modules with nothing more than a magnifying glass, VERY cool. Once I got into AMD (when I found out Intel was market rigging, bribing, and rigging benchmarks to push their shitty Netburst arch) I started getting into checking out their chip layouts and their chip layouts? Really straightforward. Like I said ALUs, Load/store, FPU, a big ass cache, even their Bulldozer and later Vishera were laid out simply and logically, they simply bet that more cores would be better than less cores with faster single core performance but sadly software just didn't take advantage of the hardware.

    But the EFF started pushing that "ZOMFG AMD has a security module like Intel wharrgarbl!" when it was all based on an abandoned "coming soon" article about hardware that turned out to be complete vaporware. Even the AM1 had the security module blown in the hardware which anybody that thought about it for a second would know why, I mean do you REALLY think MSFT and Sony would be happy if their security module that keeps their consoles from being hacked was being sold on a $29 APU on the easily hackable PC platform? They would have a royal shitfit and the hackers would have a field day trying to find weaknesses in the module because they know its the actual chip used in PS4 and Xbone...but nobody has bothered to even try using an AM1 to hack a PS4 because when AMD blows the questionable cache they blow the security module so its just a teeny tiny bit of dead silicon.

    So if you want a PC with no security modules to worry about? Just get an AMD.

    --
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