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posted by martyb on Friday November 10 2017, @02:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the hardware-wants-to-be-free? dept.

It looks like it's nearly game over for the Intel Management Engine:

Positive Technologies, which in September said it has a way to attack the Intel Management Engine, has dropped more details on how its exploit works.

The firm has already promised to demonstrate [a] God-mode hack in December 2017, saying the bug "allows an attacker of the machine to run unsigned code in the Platform Controller Hub on any motherboard".

For some details, we'll have to wait, but what's known is bad enough: Intel Management Engine (IME) talks to standard Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) debugging ports. As [does] USB, so Positive Technologies researchers put the two together and crafted a way to access IME from the USB port.

[...] The latest attack came to Vulture South's attention via a couple of Tweets:

Game over! We (I and @_markel___ ) have obtained fully functional JTAG for Intel CSME via USB DCI. #intelme #jtag #inteldci pic.twitter.com/cRPuO8J0oG

— Maxim Goryachy (@h0t_max) November 8, 2017

Full access the Intel ME( >=Skylake) by JTAG debugging via USB DCI https://t.co/TMvOirXOVI @ptsecurity @h0t_max @_markel___

— Hardened-GNU/Linux (@hardenedlinux) November 8, 2017

The linked blog post [in Russian] explains that since Skylake, the PCH – Intel's Platform Controller Hub, which manages chip-level communications – has offered USB access to JTAG interfaces that used to need specialised equipment. The new capability is DCI, Direct Connect Interface.

Reddit discussion linked by LoRdTAW in a journal.

Previously: Intel Management Engine Partially Defeated
Disabling Intel ME 11 Via Undocumented Mode
How-To: Disabling the Intel Management Engine
Andrew Tanenbaum's Open Letter to Intel About MINIX 3


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @02:03PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @02:03PM (#595119)

    great, then they can perhaps put a little footnote next to a quite and then attribute such citations in the footer that only people that want to see the full 140/280 characters that they didn't already read because it was too textual.

    its so bad that i've started mentally filtering out complete parts of articles that put in screen shots of the tweet after they had just referenced it and quoted it.

    it's like what I do when reading the lord of the rings or something--all those poems and songs get mentally skipped and its like they are not even on the page. doing that makes lotr, and modern news, a lot more readable.

    i guess they can't embed twitter trackers and benefit from the ad profile if they just reference it without linking it, even it if is mostly invalid because just displaying it doesnt mean most readers wanted to see the same message twice. if they are going track they can at least use a 1x1 pixel instead of repeating themselves.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Friday November 10 2017, @07:56PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 10 2017, @07:56PM (#595304)

    The text and image are both the same to you but they are very different to other people (like blind people and robots). If it was only text then they would be excluding the proof (source material). If it was only images then the page wouldn't be as searchable, indexable, and it would be junk for screen readers. Including both is okay middle ground. They could hide the images behind links or pop-ups but i think far fewer people would see the content. Maybe that's okay?

    --
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