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Linux computer vendor System76 announced this week that it will roll out a firmware update to disable Intel Management Engine on laptops sold in the past few years. Purism will also disable Intel Management Engine on computers it sells moving forward. Those two computer companies are pretty small players in the multi-billion dollar PC industry. …
... Intel's Management Engine is a hardware and software system designed to provide some remote management features. But it's come under criticism from privacy advocates, security researchers, and the free and open source software community.
That's because Intel Management Engine is basically a mystery. It's software that runs independently of a computer's operating system, which means that even if you wipe the OS, the Management Engine is still there. And there's no good way to know what it's doing.
The risks aren't just theoretical – Intel recently acknowledged a security vulnerability affecting nearly every PC that shipped with a 6th, 7th, or 8th-gen Intel Core processor. While the company is working with PC makers to roll out updates to patch that vulnerability, it wouldn't even exist if Intel hadn't bundled a feature many users don't need and won't use with its latest chips.
System76 are making a similar move:
System76 is one a handful of companies that sells computers that run Linux software out of the box. But like most PCs that have shipped with Intel’s Core processors in the past few years, System76 laptops include Intel’s Management Engine firmware. Intel recently confirmed a major security vulnerability affecting those chips and it’s working with …
Source: https://liliputing.com/2017/12/dell-also-sells-laptops-intel-management-engine-disabled.html
Source: https://liliputing.com/2017/11/system76-will-disable-intel-management-engine-linux-laptops.html
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:02PM (6 children)
System 7.6 was riddled with Bomb errors which would crash the entire OS constantly. I had the misfortune of running System 7.6 on a PowerBook and I needed to run Disk First Aid every day and Norton Disk Doctor every week to reverse corruption caused by all the crashes. I even installed a keylogger on my own laptop as a failsafe against losing unsaved work.
What kind of ignorant idiot would name a modern OS after one of the worst versions of MacOS ever made?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:23PM
That sound you hear is old mac users heads asploding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:38PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06 2017, @09:06PM (1 child)
So were you ever able to stop BBEdit Lite from straining to keep up?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06 2017, @11:41PM
I used Tex-Edit Plus.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 06 2017, @10:36PM
System 7 was a huge advance. But in time, real men used Mac OS 9 and then abandoned Apple for good when OS X came out.
Now that Windows is permanently forever stuck at Windows 10, I have a marketing idea . . .
Windows OS X
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Friday December 08 2017, @11:09AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.