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

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: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday July 24 2018, @01:59PM

    by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Tuesday July 24 2018, @01:59PM (#711720)

    What? All the evidence you need to disprove your hypothesis exists in the mobile operating system space. Nothing in that space is open source from top to bottom. Not a damn thing. Casual users, power users, technology enthusiasts - they don't care.

    Intel, Hollywood, DRM, and the surveillance state are winning.

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