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Why Intel Will Never Let Owners Control the Management Engine

posted by chromas on Monday July 23 2018, @10:22PM   
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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Original Submission

• Re:RISC-V?Re:RISC-V? (Score: 5, Informative) by requerdanos on Monday July 23 2018, @11:59PM (1 child)

  by requerdanos (5997) on Monday July 23 2018, @11:59PM (#711489) Journal

  Does the RISC-V https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org] CPU have an ME? No?

  I, for one, would love to see a desktop version of something like this Gigabyte ARM server: https://b2b.gigabyte.com/ARM-Server/R120-T33-rev-110 [gigabyte.com]

  It has a Cavium ThunderX 64-bit ARM (aarch64) 48-core CPU, DDR4 RAM, and no management engine or other factory malware.

  Alas, like the RISC-V boards, it costs about as much as a good used car, or a secondhand travel trailer.

  I would love to see cheap (Chinese, perhaps? Anyone in Shenzhen listening?) ATX or mATX commodity boards with non-x86 processors (fast ones, not slow junk) more in the cost range of US$100-$250.

  Parent

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• Re:RISC-V?(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday July 24 2018, @02:20AM

  by coolgopher (1157) on Tuesday July 24 2018, @02:20AM (#711520)

  Somehow wrangle a 16x PCI-Express slot onto that and you could have a real winner.

  Parent