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Prediction: over time, there will remain no commercially significant high-end chips without this sort of a "security subsystem." Recommending ARM, PowerPC or ot
by _yosefk 10y ago
Prediction: over time, there will remain no commercially significant high-end chips without this sort of a "security subsystem." Recommending ARM, PowerPC or other architectures over x86 as the FSF suggests will not get you very far because the problem (or as chip vendors call it, the solution) is not in the ISA, it's in the chip, and every chip vendor making the sort of chip that can power a general-purpose computer will end up being this way.
Of course in practice, as long as say Linux runs on the machine, the existence of the ME or the like is almost inconsequential for the user, because you run the same software, and there's never a shortage of security vulnerabilities right there in the OS and the userspace software. In terms of the impact on the number of vulnerabilities, eliminating C and C++ would go way further than eliminating black box "security" hardware, just because the huge amount of C and C++ code, much of it written hastily and committed the moment it "runs on my machine", presents a much larger attack surface than the black box hardware + software system. But of course the FSF will never recommend ditching C and C++.
- joosters 10y agoWell done for turning an unrelated issue into a C++ rant!
- _yosefk 10y agoDo you think the keylogger running on your and my machine came in by exploiting the ME or a C buffer overflow somewhere in the OS or userspace code that sister claims you "control"?
- reality_czech 10y ago"Luckily," we don't have to choose between being afraid of firmware and afraid of C and C++. The shitty Management Engine and other firmware code will be written in C or C++ by terrible coders. The UEFI source code is over 7000 files and 100 MB of code, according to Matthew Garret: https://www.linux.com/learn/uefi-secure-boot-big-hassle-questionable-benefit https://www.linux.com/learn/uefi-secure-boot-big-hassle-ques... . And it can continue running once the OS has booted now (a great "feature" that was missing from the BIOS, right?)
- yuhong 10y agoIntel ME is a blob written by Intel however and all OEMs uses the same one. I'd bet on UEFI code being worse than the Intel ME firmware.
- reality_czech 10y agoIsn't this kind of like arguing over which brand of hot dog has more pink slime and factory floor sweepings? They all do. Anyway, ME is likely to be a much higher value target for hackers. A compromise there would compromise millions of PCs, whereas a UEFI hack would be specific to one vendor.
- yuhong 10y agoObviously, but UEFI tends to cause more of the practical problems and attacks, including non-security ones and DoS attacks (some of which is easy to do under Windows).
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago> In terms of the impact on the number of vulnerabilities, eliminating C and C++ would go way further than eliminating black box "security" hardware, just because the huge amount of C and C++ code, much of it written hastily and committed the moment it "runs on my machine", presents a much larger attack surface than the black box hardware + software system. But of course the FSF will never recommend ditching C and C++. This is missing the point you can and do have control over the C code which runs on your machine; the same cannot be said for ME. The comparison is entirely disingenuous.