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Why Intel Will Never Let Owners Control the Management Engine

posted by chromas on Monday July 23 2018, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the drm dept.

canopic jug writes:

Hugo Landau has written a blog post about why Intel will never let hardware owners control the Management Engine. The Intel Managment Engine (ME) is a secondary microprocessor ensconced in recent Intel x86 chips, running an Intel-signed, proprietary, binary blob which provides remote access over the network as well as direct access to memory and peripherals. Because of the code signing restrictions enforced by the hardware, it cannot be modified or replaced by the user.

Intel/AMD will never allow machine owners to control the code executing on the ME/PSP because they have decided to build a business on preventing you from doing so. In particular, it's likely that they're actually contractually obligated not to let you control these processors.

The reason is that Intel literally decided to collude with Hollywood to integrate DRM into their CPUs; they conspired with media companies to lock you out of certain parts of your machine. After all, this is the company that created HDCP.

This DRM functionality is implemented on the ME/PSP. Its ability to implement DRM depends on you not having control over it, and not having control over the code that runs on it. Allowing you to control the code running on the ME would directly compromise an initiative which Intel has been advancing for over a decade.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @01:30PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @01:30PM (#711707)

    Can this blog author provide any proof that Hollywood is involved in management engines?

    Yes. It's written right in there, with explicit links to material published by Intel.

    To quote from that linked page [intel.com] (note the domain of the link!):

    Intel Insider is a feature that enables consumers to enjoy premium Hollywood feature films streamed to their PC in high quality 1080P high definition. Currently this service does not exist because the movie studios are concerned about protecting their content, and making sure that it cannot be stolen or used illegally. So Intel created Intel insider, an extra layer of content protection.

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  • (Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday July 24 2018, @07:10PM

    by epitaxial (3165) on Tuesday July 24 2018, @07:10PM (#711833)

    Yeah HDCP is used for copyright protection. How does it interface with the IME?