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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.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday July 24 2018, @02:03PM (2 children)
Considering that Hollywood is what, about 5% of the market?
How does that sneak past the BoD, who are presumably beholden to making profits for the shareholders?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday July 25 2018, @08:22AM (1 child)
I believe Hollywood is being used as plausible deniability that the real reason is increased governmental snooping and ability to shut down systems.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Wednesday July 25 2018, @01:55PM
Having worked in Hollywood, two observations:
1) Hollywood's real function is as a giant open-air money laundry. (Not only "Hollywood accounting" but that most films lose money by design. 90% of film productions never make it to the can, but everyone involved still gets paid. TV is much cleaner because budgets are fixed, unlike film where they're open-ended.) Everything is sorta technically legal and above-board, but only because it's hard to prove waste wasn't ...allowed, if not outright deliberate.
2) Outside of the lawyer contingent, who will always behave like lawyers, Hollywood is too disorganized to be useful to any gov't for anything other than propaganda. And in America, Hollywood has always been under the control of the communist left (nowadays meaning the diversity police), so that's the propaganda we get; not exactly useful to a gov't seeking stability and cohesion, but perhaps to one seeking division and chaos (and its own demise, but that's a different problem).
But I think another poster nailed it: this article has little foundation, but a very large axe to grind. It's an opinion piece, not an Intel manifesto. I looked through this HL's other articles, and while lots of good technical points, kinda has that RMS skew, so to speak.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.