29 ms·

Uncorrectable freedom and security issues on x86 platforms (2016)

289 points by shirian 10y ago

j_s 10y ago
Should point to: http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-April/010912.html http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-April/01... Canonical presentation: REcon 2014 - Intel Management Engine Secrets (Igor Skochinsky) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kCICUPc9_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kCICUPc9_8 Decoding ME firmware in BIOS updates until Skylake (2015): http://io.netgarage.org/me/ http://io.netgarage.org/me/
parenthephobia 10y ago
(Article is from 2016.)
- AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
  Even then, he's a little late to the party.
__jal 10y ago
Would love to see and ARM or MIPS setup get within shouting range of Intel. I have yet to hear any explanation of the IME that makes sense without the presence user-hostile intent.
- timonovici 10y ago
  Management of "corporate" computers. Installing Windows on hundreds of machines at once, remotely wiping stolend laptops with corporate secrets. But the cancer has spread to all computers, regardless of domain of activity.
- rocqua 10y ago
  > I have yet to hear any explanation of the IME that makes sense without the presence user-hostile intent. The entirety of enterprise laptop management. Not because you don't want users to change their laptop. The point is to be able to run updates for the users. Or consider the remote KVM option. Disregarding security, that is a sysadmin's wet dream. Being able to recover a system that can't boot saves a lot of boots on the ground.
  - 1001101 10y ago
    Even if the CPU running Windows is bluescreened, you can still pull up a KVM remotely. Demonstrates the power that AMT possesses for good or ill.
  - __jal 10y ago
    I get all that - I've worked in enterprise IT my entire career. It does not explain the 30 minute timer.
    - discreditable 10y ago
      > It does not explain the 30 minute timer. An innocent use would be: "If the ME is hung, turn it off and on again."
      - __jal 10y ago
        Sigh. If I need to spell this out: Why is the ME watchdog mandatory? What innocent explanation details why Intel has chosen to deny me the option to consider the ME a security risk in my environment and disable it?
- Spooky23 10y ago
  You need a PKI infrastructure to implement AMT/IME. I used it a few years ago to automatically build classroom computers for training classes. The trainer would pick a configuration, and a complete server and workstation environment would be installed. You can also do KVM from a powered down state, brick the device, or validate that management engines are present.
- ajross 10y ago
  Consumer ARM-based platforms in the market right now are even more locked down and spy-hook-infected than any x86 laptop. The baseband CPU on most phones is a far more capable device than the microcontrollers used for this on big core machines, and they routinely have access to all of DRAM without the possibility of interception by the application core.
throwaway77384 10y ago
This needs more attention. Particularly now that AMD may actually look into cooperating with the community on this matter somewhat. I wouldn't get my hopes up yet though, as this was a Reddit AMA done during a time when AMD is keen to please the community. This matter must not go away for something to be done about it.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  Are there any projects out there that throw the baby out with the bathwater and just restart computing from the ground up with freedom as a foundation? I'd love to participate something like that and I think it'd be a great way to respark 80's like hacker movement.
  - throwaway77384 10y ago
    Libreboot and coreboot are trying to open source things on the software side of things (think dd-wrt or openwrt or tomato for routers, custom firmware basically). With hardware it's a bit of a different story. You hear about attempts from time to time, but getting away from Intel / AMD is really hard. The suggestions from the article about alternative architectures seem to be our best bet currently.
    - 1001101 10y ago
      Their attempts will be just that. There's a SHA256 signature required to verify the ME code - no signature, no boot (or boot for 30 mins less commonly). They won't share the keys with just anyone.
      - zvalqoh 10y ago
        It's sha256? I wonder if a Bitcoin shared mining setup could co-op some of those hashes to brute force the keys.
    - jasonkostempski 10y ago
      Alternative architectures is definitely the most pragmatic thing to go for. I was going off on a bit of a tangent from the article and just wondering if anyone has tried redoing the 70's - 90's without trying to be compatible with any existing technology but still learning from the mistakes.
bogomipz 10y ago
The article states the following for RISCV: >"While this architecture is extremely limited in performance, price" Can anyone say thy the performance of RISCV is so lacking?
- kbenson 10y ago
  Likely because there's no major consumer devices shipping them (or at least high-end versions of them) that could help them hit a scale that brings the cost down, which makes them less viable for a general public consumer standpoint, which means there's less time spent optimizing it. I remember a wihle back when Google was shopping around for Intel replacements (likely a negotiation tactic), people were saying they should buy the POWER division from IBM (IIRC). That would have been really interesting...
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    >"I remember a wihle back when Google was shopping around for Intel replacements (likely a negotiation tactic), people were saying they should buy the POWER division from IBM (IIRC). " Funny, I was speaking to some IBM engineers a few months ago and brought up the POWER chips and they kind of laughed and said something to effect that biggest use case for POWER was Google as a means of keeping Intel pricing in check.
- tyingq 10y ago
  I suppose it's true for currently available chips that implement the RISC-V ISA. Nothing says the ISA itself is a barrier to performance on par with popular existing processors though. The RISC-V BOOM implementation is supposed to be close to an ARM Cortex A9 in performance.
- DSingularity 10y ago
  Major manufacturers -- like Intel, AMD or ARM -- have spent years upons years developing methodologies, technologies, micro-architectural optimizations, and testing+development+evaluation infrastructure. This is the key for understanding how to navigate and ensure good performance across the many different trade-off and optimization domains in performant-processor design. This is not easy to acquire or build. Some is wisdom from decades of design and iteration. Some is hundreds of thousands of engineering hours. Some is big money. RISC V is a new open source project. Who knows how close they will ever get.
cure 10y ago
Happy to see more attention to this problem. The FSF called it out back in 2014, as well: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/active-management-technology https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/active-management-techno...
0x0 10y ago
Isn't it sci-fi-level incredible, and frankly both scary and shady, that every modern x86 CPU has this forced sub-ring-0 control program? And that the CPU vendors apparently go to extreme lengths in hiding its functionality? Why would even large vendors like Apple or Dell agree to this? The 30-minute timeout is particularly mischievous. It's like they REALLY want to slow down any effort at patching out the ME. Are we going to have to wait on an insider leak on what's the real deal here? Or have I completely missed out on a perfectly good excuse for what's going on?
- throwawaysed 10y ago
  NSA 100% . Some time around 10 years ago governments decided the internet was too "dangerous" to be free. Arab spring cemented that into their minds, and now a bastion of free thought has become the worlds biggest spying apparatus.
  - trome 10y ago
    So why not build our own network with crypto, blackjack & hookers on libre hardware? Say on an OrangePi PC2 with a bunch of high gain USB 5GHz radios attached, and throw some spinning rust on there so you can run a Nextcloud instance and/or join your local Ceph cluster/IPFS. We have CJDNS (which salsa20's all your data & can VPN legacy networks to ya), fully FLOSS SBCs for under $20ea, and 802.11n and AC outdoor radios can be had for cheap, this is merely a community involvement problem.
    - timonovici 10y ago
      The issue is not widely known, silicon is very costly to manufacture, and most people frankly don't care, as long that spying is unobtrusive (and hell it is so). Also, most people already are living with the thought that their computers are cracked/hacked/virused the moment they are connected to the internet - all my friends and relatives ask me to check their computer for viruses - almost none trust their computers or phones (especially Android phones, it seems). For such people, where this is the natural state of the world, it's very hard to imagine that they can change anything about it - and telling them that there are backdoors from the moment the laptop is assembled, doesn't help much.
KirinDave 10y ago
... I confess I'm very frustrated reading about how trusted computing modules hurt the cause of FOSS but no alternatives to actually try and carry out cryptography to execute trusted code. Inevitably the complaint is, "Well if they have physical access you're screwed anyways." And I just don't understand how anyone can maintain that farce when the last year has shown that it's a genuine challenge even for the US FBI to unlock a mobile device without the owners say-so and it's getting harder all the time. If you truly believe that physical access is a trump of any security then you can never trust your hardware anyways, as it is exceptionaly hard to prove it conforms to a spec.
- the8472 10y ago
  > And I just don't understand how anyone can maintain that farce when the last year has shown that it's a genuine challenge even for the US FBI to unlock a mobile device without the owners say-so Difficulty? Yes. But the FBI is not the NSA, they don't specialize in such attacks. It's like asking your plumber to do heart surgery. So they commissioned it to else who does, and boom, they had access. Strong cryptographic security shouldn't have a pricetag any lower than "we feed all the hydrogen in the universe to black holes to harvest enough energy for the computations". And phone security is orthogonal to baked-in firmware signing keys. The only change you need is allowing the user to add their own signing keys maybe with the caveat that all data in the protected keystore gets destroyed in the process. Then you have freedom and secure boot in one package. The signing keys are the issue, not the ring -1 management code. > If you truly believe that physical access is a trump of any security then you can never trust your hardware anyways, as it is exceptionaly hard to prove it conforms to a spec. Here are some simple steps 1. compel a manufacturer to create a spy-firmware, signed with their signing key 2. get access to a device for a few minutes 3. patch firmware that exfiltrates the data once the device is unlocked by the user 4. return device to user / to where the user placed it This is assuming strong encryption keys. If it is only protected by an unlock code your steps look like this. 1. acquire device 2. a) compel manufacturer to create a firmware that bypasses "delete on unlock failure" feature b) unsolder chips, apply silver needles to flash controllers so you can read/restore internal key storage whenever it gets wiped 3. enumerate all N-digit pass codes until it is unlocked As you can see hardware security does not save you when the strong keys are on the device and the user only enters a weak key. Similarly hardware security does not save you if a hostile entity got access to your hardware.
bogomipz 10y ago
I was struck by the following passage: >including Secure Boot, which even now requires FOSS users to purchase a license from Microsoft to boot FOSS on affected machines that lack an appropriate Secure Boot override." Can someone explain this to me, would this be for instance be Lenovo laptops making a deal with Microsoft since Windows is the default OS installed on these laptops? Is Microsoft mandating all OEMs/hardware vendors to configure secure boot with a MS signing key? Even if I order a laptop with no OS installed?
- wmf 10y ago
  Is Microsoft mandating all OEMs/hardware vendors to configure secure boot with a MS signing key? Basically yes; it's required to get the Windows sticker. I haven't heard that MS charges money to sign bootloaders, though.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Thanks, I have to wonder how much of bureaucratic headache that is to get your bootloader signed.
    - wmf 10y ago
      James Bottomley navigated the bureaucracy and lived to tell about it: https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/adventures-in-microsoft-uefi-signing/ https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/adventures-in-microsoft-u...
      - bogomipz 10y ago
        Oh interesting, thanks for the link.
  - sblom 10y ago
    I believe that the Windows 10 logo requirements are exactly the opposite of that. If you look at the UEFI requirements for Windows 10[1], specifically clauses 19 and 20, it says for non-ARM systems the user MUST be able to put Secure Boot into Custom signature-checking mode. [1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/hardware/commercialize/design/compatibility/systems#system-fundamentals-firmware-uefisecureboot https://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/hardware/commercialize/de...
awinter-py 10y ago
Is there evidence these have been used to harm anyone? Not that I wouldn't like a world with no more blobs (or at least reproducible-build signed blobs). But I use a ton of software I don't have time to review. Why is solving this more important than, say, looking for RPC holes in docker?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
>Both serve effectively the same purpose; to ensure that the physical owner of the machine never has full control of said machine. That is the end-result, yes, but that wasn't the purpose: the purpose was to allow companies to keep track of their laptops--to remotely push out firmware updates, to inventory the hardware/asset list, etc. It was a convenience feature, essentially. Of course, the end-result, as stated, is that you've got a complete black-box second processor that can do whatever it wants, even when your device is off.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Nah, that wasn't the purpose unless Im misremembering. It came later as a selling point. It started in initiatives such as Trusted Computing Group where these companies agreed on technologies to control what runs on the PC for security and DRM purposes. Featured regular, secret meetings on top of the public ones.They took lots of flak when DRM goals got press attention. That they're just helping companies manage stuff or users fix computers sounds much more pleasant. They also made sure it was true by adding those features. ;)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
graycat 10y ago
I'm trying to understand all of this and especially the threats to privacy, control of my computing hardware, and data security. I read about some new hard/software for secure boot, etc., but don't recall all the details now. So, for a shorter approach, suppose I just buy a processor from AMD, a motherboard from ASUS, hard disk drives from Western Digital, etc., and plug it all together for myself. So, then I'm the manufacturer or OEM of my computer. Q. 1. For what the OP is talking about, where do I have threats to privacy, control of my machine and its data, and security? Q. 2. To use the machine I plugged together, do I have to get some keys from Microsoft? Q. 3. Suppose I install operating systems from Microsoft, e.g., Windows 7 64 bit Professional, Windows 10, Windows Server or the database SQL Server. Then do I have to get keys from Microsoft? Q. 4. Will the support processor and its software, whatever they are called, on their own without my knowledge or approval use the Internet to send/receive data from/to my computer, modify the data on my hard disks, etc.? Thanks.
- timonovici 10y ago
  1. The motherboad has a ARC chip, that loads a firmware included in the flash chip. That ARC chip is supposedly inside the PCH (Platform Controller Hub, a north bridge on steroids) - it's efectively in the silicon, you can't remove it. 2. Depends on the motherboard and the BIOS written in the flash chip 3. No. They are already signed. 4. If somebody controls them and ask them to do so. All that's necesary is a LAN connection (or wifi, but only with Intel chips) and power. The HDD is completely irrelevant, as is the OS.
  - graycat 10y ago
    The motherboard I have in mind is the ASUS m5a97 r2.0. Back in October, 2015 I got a PDF on that motherboard at http://data.manualslib.com/pdf2/42/4150/414970-asus/m5a97_r20_user_manual.pdf?21746bed4ca8a7cf8dc1026baaa917b8&take=binary http://data.manualslib.com/pdf2/42/4150/414970-asus/m5a97_r2... Just checking, the PDF does mention the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) but not ARC or PCH. That ASUS manual does mention that the UEFI BIOS does offer automatic updating of the BIOS version; that feature, if enabled, does seem to raise security concerns. Looking at the UEFI page of Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_In... there is > UEFI can support remote diagnostics and repair of computers, even with no operating system installed.[3] which seems to raise some security concerns. Also it does appear that some people trying to install an operating system might encounter some mud wrestling. Maybe what I'm intending to do with Microsoft's Windows 7, 10, and Server will be easy enough. Thanks.
bubblethink 10y ago
While it would be great to liberate x86, more than 4 billion people in the world use mobile phones, and phones are beyond saving. x86 is in very healthy shape compared to the clusterfuck that is the smartphone industry. If you think that coreboot is a fringe project, you need to head over to replicant or neo900 to see what the fringe actually is.
- hinkley 10y ago
  I thought Apple was working on their own baseband chip? I assume that's what you're alluding to, yeah?
- xvilka 10y ago
  Well, then you can go deeper and check out baseband firmware liberation project - OsmocomBB [1], since baseband firmware in a far worse shape than applications firmware (and TrustZone firmware) in smartphone industry. [1] https://osmocom.org/projects/baseband https://osmocom.org/projects/baseband
  - bubblethink 10y ago
    I don't think baseband can ever be truly free because of regulatory issues. The only realistic way of containing it would be through isolation.
    - adrianN 10y ago
      You could also change the regulatory framework.
    - unlmtd 10y ago
      So the revolutionary wars didn't happen?
narrator 10y ago
Want complete software freedom? How about the MIPS chips the Russian military uses[1]? Those don't have an NSA back door. Sucks you can't really buy them as they are only made for use in Russian military and government applications. "Last year, the Russian government announced that it doesn't want to rely on Intel and AMD chips from the U.S. anymore and will focus more on using homegrown chips from Russia." [1] http://www.tomshardware.com/news/baikal-t1-mips-cpu-omnishield-support,29178.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/baikal-t1-mips-cpu-omnishie...
- memmcgee 10y ago
  Those probably have Russian backdoors though.
  - sattoshi 10y ago
    In most cases, a foreign gov spying on you is harmless.
    - c22 10y ago
      In most cases a foreign government spying on you is trading their insights with your government in order to sidestep domestic spying restrictions.
    - zipwitch 10y ago
      What are the chances that the access pass from the foreign government to actors you don't want spying on you: criminals or your own government's intel agencies?
- theamk 10y ago
  Well, the actual CPU cores are designed by Imagination Technologies, which are based in UK. I would not be so sure that they are fully safe. You can make an argument that it is still an improvement, because there are no obvious binary blobs required by the system. But in this case, I would recommend going for one of the many Chinese ARM cores -- at least you can buy them easily.
- 10y ago
benmward 10y ago
Mentioned back in 2014 iirc?
etiam 10y ago
Is "uncorrectable" still a valid description? There seems to have been some progress lately in eliminating ME that are not necessary? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13416378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13416378
amluto 10y ago
> These technologies, in turn, are used to implement various forms of remote control and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, including Secure Boot, which even now requires FOSS users to purchase a license from Microsoft to boot FOSS on affected machines that lack an appropriate Secure Boot override. I dislike the mandatory use of these features as much as the next nerd, but this is inaccurate FUD. Secure Boot is a code in flash that checks the signature of whatever you try to boot against some rather complicated policy. It's regular code and would work more or less the same on any platform that runs machine code off of ROM or flash. There's something that Intel calls, IIRC, "Verified Boot" that tries to prevent someone with an in-system programmer or desoldering skills from changing the flash, but that has nothing to do with the Management Engine either. And FOSS users don't need to purchase any license from anyone. They can use a tool like Linux Foundation's PreLoader or Red Hat's shim (open source but awkward to modify because you need the signed binary to boot on a stock system) to boot anything they like. No negotiations, no license, no communication with MS at all.
- cyphar 10y ago
  > > These technologies, in turn, are used to implement various forms of remote control and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, including Secure Boot, which even now requires FOSS users to purchase a license from Microsoft to boot FOSS on affected machines that lack an appropriate Secure Boot override. > I dislike the mandatory use of these features as much as the next nerd, but this is inaccurate FUD. Secure Boot is a code in flash that checks the signature of whatever you try to boot against some rather complicated policy. It's regular code and would work more or less the same on any platform that runs machine code off of ROM or flash. "Regular code" doesn't mean it's not proprietary, and doesn't mean that it's not concerning for free software users. > And FOSS users don't need to purchase any license from anyone. They can use a tool like Linux Foundation's PreLoader or Red Hat's shim (open source but awkward to modify because you need the signed binary to boot on a stock system) to boot anything they like. No negotiations, no license, no communication with MS at all. Those preloaders are signed by Microsoft. While it is a good hack for distributions at the moment, it doesn't mean that Microsoft is no longer in the loop. They still have an incredibly worrying amount of control over what can run on modern hardware.
getpost 10y ago
How is this not an anti-trust issue? Of course the government wants this capability to access anyone's system, so I assume nothing will be done. This has to be one of the worst things that has happened in the history of computing. EDIT: Handy for CBP use, I imagine.
- bubblethink 10y ago
  This has nothing to do with anti trust. Selling hardware doesn't require you provide software or the ability to run your desired software.
saurik 10y ago
> Major distributions have worked around this issue by purchasing a signing key from Microsoft for their binary packages, but the end user is unable to modify the signed software without a license from Microsoft, even though they have the source code available to them under the GPL. Is this an accurate description of what is happening? (I don't pay much attention to desktop systems: I spend most of my time concentrating on the ever-worsening mobile arena.) Do these "major distributions" come with a recent version of bash? As someone who develops software under the GPLv3 license, I would not want my software being distributed to these machines via this hack :/.
- cyphar 10y ago
  > > Major distributions have worked around this issue by purchasing a signing key from Microsoft for their binary packages, but the end user is unable to modify the signed software without a license from Microsoft, even though they have the source code available to them under the GPL. > Is this an accurate description of what is happening? (I don't pay much attention to desktop systems: I spend most of my time concentrating on the ever-worsening mobile arena.) Do these "major distributions" come with a recent version of bash? As someone who develops software under the GPLv3 license, I would not want my software being distributed to these machines via this hack :/. It's not entirely accurate. Effectively what most modern distributions do is that they have a "shim" which is signed by Microsoft. That shim then enrols the distribution's own UEFI keys on the laptop. So their kernel is signed with both their own key and Microsoft's key. This means that you can modify your code without "permission" from Microsoft. openSUSE, Fedora and Debian all employ this tactic so that our distributions can boot on newer laptops. Do I wish this wasn't necessary and that everything ran core boot? Yes. Is there a better way of handling this problem? Not as far as I know.
- int_19h 10y ago
  I don't think GPLv3 anti-DRM clauses would kick in here. They would if 1) someone was distributing a combination of a Secure Boot-only machine with your software installed on it, and 2) the loader (which is the only thing really validated by Secure Boot) would actually try to continue the chain of trust, and validate all the other bits, such that the user cannot run a modified version of your software. I'm pretty sure that neither of those is the case, however. Once the system boots using the signed loader, it's really just Linux, and you're free to replace the kernel and any bit of userspace as usual. Furthermore, I seriously doubt that anyone is selling machines with Linux preinstalled that have Secure Boot which cannot be turned off - simply because that would become known pretty fast, and even aside from licensing issues, would elicit a very hostile reaction from the community (and hence many potential buyers).
cathartes 10y ago
Good to see mention of Talos, even if it never came to fruition.
hashhar 10y ago
Am I missing something here? > Secure Boot, which even now requires FOSS users to purchase a license from Microsoft to boot FOSS on affected machines that lack an appropriate Secure Boot override. I recently installed rEFInd from source by using a self-singed certificate (signed the binary using it and enrolled the key into the EFI using mokutil) and it worked. I certainly didn't have to pay MS. I do know that rEFInd provides a key of their own (using the distro's shim) that obviously has trust rooted at MS.
upofadown 10y ago
>As Intel owns all rights to the x86 architecture, there will never be any new manufacturers licensed to make x86 chips ... This strikes me as the root problem here. How can one company be granted a monopoly on what is basically an instruction set? Particularly in the case of the instruction set our civilization runs on? Since I can't understand how something like this could happen I don't understand why any replacement architecture wouldn't end up being controlled by a single entity.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  I believe it's not the instruction set they have patents on per se, but rather on how to implement it efficiently.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    Which provides strong evidence that patents are the root of all evil.
- bubblethink 10y ago
  The legality of x86's ISA being copyrighted/patented aside, the x86 ISA isn't that attractive for any new endeavours. It's a very complex ISA which is incredibly difficult to decode. Internally, it is anyway converted to RISC style microops. So as a competitor, you don't really gain a whole lot by implementing the x86 ISA apart from the ability to run software without writing a new compiler. What's more important is the microarchitecture.

289 points by shirian 10y ago

j_s 10y ago

Should point to: http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-April/010912.html http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-April/01... Canonical presentation: REcon 2014 - Intel Management Engine Secrets (Igor Skochinsky) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kCICUPc9_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kCICUPc9_8 Decoding ME firmware in BIOS updates until Skylake (2015): http://io.netgarage.org/me/ http://io.netgarage.org/me/

parenthephobia 10y ago

(Article is from 2016.)

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
Even then, he's a little late to the party.

__jal 10y ago

Would love to see and ARM or MIPS setup get within shouting range of Intel. I have yet to hear any explanation of the IME that makes sense without the presence user-hostile intent.

timonovici 10y ago
Management of "corporate" computers. Installing Windows on hundreds of machines at once, remotely wiping stolend laptops with corporate secrets. But the cancer has spread to all computers, regardless of domain of activity.
rocqua 10y ago
> I have yet to hear any explanation of the IME that makes sense without the presence user-hostile intent. The entirety of enterprise laptop management. Not because you don't want users to change their laptop. The point is to be able to run updates for the users. Or consider the remote KVM option. Disregarding security, that is a sysadmin's wet dream. Being able to recover a system that can't boot saves a lot of boots on the ground.
- 1001101 10y ago
  Even if the CPU running Windows is bluescreened, you can still pull up a KVM remotely. Demonstrates the power that AMT possesses for good or ill.
- __jal 10y ago
  I get all that - I've worked in enterprise IT my entire career. It does not explain the 30 minute timer.
  - discreditable 10y ago
    > It does not explain the 30 minute timer. An innocent use would be: "If the ME is hung, turn it off and on again."
    - __jal 10y ago
      Sigh. If I need to spell this out: Why is the ME watchdog mandatory? What innocent explanation details why Intel has chosen to deny me the option to consider the ME a security risk in my environment and disable it?
Spooky23 10y ago
You need a PKI infrastructure to implement AMT/IME. I used it a few years ago to automatically build classroom computers for training classes. The trainer would pick a configuration, and a complete server and workstation environment would be installed. You can also do KVM from a powered down state, brick the device, or validate that management engines are present.
ajross 10y ago
Consumer ARM-based platforms in the market right now are even more locked down and spy-hook-infected than any x86 laptop. The baseband CPU on most phones is a far more capable device than the microcontrollers used for this on big core machines, and they routinely have access to all of DRAM without the possibility of interception by the application core.

throwaway77384 10y ago

This needs more attention. Particularly now that AMD may actually look into cooperating with the community on this matter somewhat. I wouldn't get my hopes up yet though, as this was a Reddit AMA done during a time when AMD is keen to please the community. This matter must not go away for something to be done about it.

jasonkostempski 10y ago
Are there any projects out there that throw the baby out with the bathwater and just restart computing from the ground up with freedom as a foundation? I'd love to participate something like that and I think it'd be a great way to respark 80's like hacker movement.
- throwaway77384 10y ago
  Libreboot and coreboot are trying to open source things on the software side of things (think dd-wrt or openwrt or tomato for routers, custom firmware basically). With hardware it's a bit of a different story. You hear about attempts from time to time, but getting away from Intel / AMD is really hard. The suggestions from the article about alternative architectures seem to be our best bet currently.
  - 1001101 10y ago
    Their attempts will be just that. There's a SHA256 signature required to verify the ME code - no signature, no boot (or boot for 30 mins less commonly). They won't share the keys with just anyone.
    - zvalqoh 10y ago
      It's sha256? I wonder if a Bitcoin shared mining setup could co-op some of those hashes to brute force the keys.
  - jasonkostempski 10y ago
    Alternative architectures is definitely the most pragmatic thing to go for. I was going off on a bit of a tangent from the article and just wondering if anyone has tried redoing the 70's - 90's without trying to be compatible with any existing technology but still learning from the mistakes.

bogomipz 10y ago

The article states the following for RISCV: >"While this architecture is extremely limited in performance, price" Can anyone say thy the performance of RISCV is so lacking?

kbenson 10y ago
Likely because there's no major consumer devices shipping them (or at least high-end versions of them) that could help them hit a scale that brings the cost down, which makes them less viable for a general public consumer standpoint, which means there's less time spent optimizing it. I remember a wihle back when Google was shopping around for Intel replacements (likely a negotiation tactic), people were saying they should buy the POWER division from IBM (IIRC). That would have been really interesting...
- bogomipz 10y ago
  >"I remember a wihle back when Google was shopping around for Intel replacements (likely a negotiation tactic), people were saying they should buy the POWER division from IBM (IIRC). " Funny, I was speaking to some IBM engineers a few months ago and brought up the POWER chips and they kind of laughed and said something to effect that biggest use case for POWER was Google as a means of keeping Intel pricing in check.
tyingq 10y ago
I suppose it's true for currently available chips that implement the RISC-V ISA. Nothing says the ISA itself is a barrier to performance on par with popular existing processors though. The RISC-V BOOM implementation is supposed to be close to an ARM Cortex A9 in performance.
DSingularity 10y ago
Major manufacturers -- like Intel, AMD or ARM -- have spent years upons years developing methodologies, technologies, micro-architectural optimizations, and testing+development+evaluation infrastructure. This is the key for understanding how to navigate and ensure good performance across the many different trade-off and optimization domains in performant-processor design. This is not easy to acquire or build. Some is wisdom from decades of design and iteration. Some is hundreds of thousands of engineering hours. Some is big money. RISC V is a new open source project. Who knows how close they will ever get.

cure 10y ago

Happy to see more attention to this problem. The FSF called it out back in 2014, as well: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/active-management-technology https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/active-management-techno...

0x0 10y ago

Isn't it sci-fi-level incredible, and frankly both scary and shady, that every modern x86 CPU has this forced sub-ring-0 control program? And that the CPU vendors apparently go to extreme lengths in hiding its functionality? Why would even large vendors like Apple or Dell agree to this? The 30-minute timeout is particularly mischievous. It's like they REALLY want to slow down any effort at patching out the ME. Are we going to have to wait on an insider leak on what's the real deal here? Or have I completely missed out on a perfectly good excuse for what's going on?

throwawaysed 10y ago
NSA 100% . Some time around 10 years ago governments decided the internet was too "dangerous" to be free. Arab spring cemented that into their minds, and now a bastion of free thought has become the worlds biggest spying apparatus.
- trome 10y ago
  So why not build our own network with crypto, blackjack & hookers on libre hardware? Say on an OrangePi PC2 with a bunch of high gain USB 5GHz radios attached, and throw some spinning rust on there so you can run a Nextcloud instance and/or join your local Ceph cluster/IPFS. We have CJDNS (which salsa20's all your data & can VPN legacy networks to ya), fully FLOSS SBCs for under $20ea, and 802.11n and AC outdoor radios can be had for cheap, this is merely a community involvement problem.
  - timonovici 10y ago
    The issue is not widely known, silicon is very costly to manufacture, and most people frankly don't care, as long that spying is unobtrusive (and hell it is so). Also, most people already are living with the thought that their computers are cracked/hacked/virused the moment they are connected to the internet - all my friends and relatives ask me to check their computer for viruses - almost none trust their computers or phones (especially Android phones, it seems). For such people, where this is the natural state of the world, it's very hard to imagine that they can change anything about it - and telling them that there are backdoors from the moment the laptop is assembled, doesn't help much.

KirinDave 10y ago

... I confess I'm very frustrated reading about how trusted computing modules hurt the cause of FOSS but no alternatives to actually try and carry out cryptography to execute trusted code. Inevitably the complaint is, "Well if they have physical access you're screwed anyways." And I just don't understand how anyone can maintain that farce when the last year has shown that it's a genuine challenge even for the US FBI to unlock a mobile device without the owners say-so and it's getting harder all the time. If you truly believe that physical access is a trump of any security then you can never trust your hardware anyways, as it is exceptionaly hard to prove it conforms to a spec.

the8472 10y ago
> And I just don't understand how anyone can maintain that farce when the last year has shown that it's a genuine challenge even for the US FBI to unlock a mobile device without the owners say-so Difficulty? Yes. But the FBI is not the NSA, they don't specialize in such attacks. It's like asking your plumber to do heart surgery. So they commissioned it to else who does, and boom, they had access. Strong cryptographic security shouldn't have a pricetag any lower than "we feed all the hydrogen in the universe to black holes to harvest enough energy for the computations". And phone security is orthogonal to baked-in firmware signing keys. The only change you need is allowing the user to add their own signing keys maybe with the caveat that all data in the protected keystore gets destroyed in the process. Then you have freedom and secure boot in one package. The signing keys are the issue, not the ring -1 management code. > If you truly believe that physical access is a trump of any security then you can never trust your hardware anyways, as it is exceptionaly hard to prove it conforms to a spec. Here are some simple steps 1. compel a manufacturer to create a spy-firmware, signed with their signing key 2. get access to a device for a few minutes 3. patch firmware that exfiltrates the data once the device is unlocked by the user 4. return device to user / to where the user placed it This is assuming strong encryption keys. If it is only protected by an unlock code your steps look like this. 1. acquire device 2. a) compel manufacturer to create a firmware that bypasses "delete on unlock failure" feature b) unsolder chips, apply silver needles to flash controllers so you can read/restore internal key storage whenever it gets wiped 3. enumerate all N-digit pass codes until it is unlocked As you can see hardware security does not save you when the strong keys are on the device and the user only enters a weak key. Similarly hardware security does not save you if a hostile entity got access to your hardware.

bogomipz 10y ago

I was struck by the following passage: >including Secure Boot, which even now requires FOSS users to purchase a license from Microsoft to boot FOSS on affected machines that lack an appropriate Secure Boot override." Can someone explain this to me, would this be for instance be Lenovo laptops making a deal with Microsoft since Windows is the default OS installed on these laptops? Is Microsoft mandating all OEMs/hardware vendors to configure secure boot with a MS signing key? Even if I order a laptop with no OS installed?

wmf 10y ago
Is Microsoft mandating all OEMs/hardware vendors to configure secure boot with a MS signing key? Basically yes; it's required to get the Windows sticker. I haven't heard that MS charges money to sign bootloaders, though.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Thanks, I have to wonder how much of bureaucratic headache that is to get your bootloader signed.
  - wmf 10y ago
    James Bottomley navigated the bureaucracy and lived to tell about it: https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/adventures-in-microsoft-uefi-signing/ https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/adventures-in-microsoft-u...
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      Oh interesting, thanks for the link.
- sblom 10y ago
  I believe that the Windows 10 logo requirements are exactly the opposite of that. If you look at the UEFI requirements for Windows 10[1], specifically clauses 19 and 20, it says for non-ARM systems the user MUST be able to put Secure Boot into Custom signature-checking mode. [1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/hardware/commercialize/design/compatibility/systems#system-fundamentals-firmware-uefisecureboot https://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/hardware/commercialize/de...

awinter-py 10y ago

Is there evidence these have been used to harm anyone? Not that I wouldn't like a world with no more blobs (or at least reproducible-build signed blobs). But I use a ton of software I don't have time to review. Why is solving this more important than, say, looking for RPC holes in docker?

deleted 10y ago
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AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

>Both serve effectively the same purpose; to ensure that the physical owner of the machine never has full control of said machine. That is the end-result, yes, but that wasn't the purpose: the purpose was to allow companies to keep track of their laptops--to remotely push out firmware updates, to inventory the hardware/asset list, etc. It was a convenience feature, essentially. Of course, the end-result, as stated, is that you've got a complete black-box second processor that can do whatever it wants, even when your device is off.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
Nah, that wasn't the purpose unless Im misremembering. It came later as a selling point. It started in initiatives such as Trusted Computing Group where these companies agreed on technologies to control what runs on the PC for security and DRM purposes. Featured regular, secret meetings on top of the public ones.They took lots of flak when DRM goals got press attention. That they're just helping companies manage stuff or users fix computers sounds much more pleasant. They also made sure it was true by adding those features. ;)

deleted 10y ago

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graycat 10y ago

I'm trying to understand all of this and especially the threats to privacy, control of my computing hardware, and data security. I read about some new hard/software for secure boot, etc., but don't recall all the details now. So, for a shorter approach, suppose I just buy a processor from AMD, a motherboard from ASUS, hard disk drives from Western Digital, etc., and plug it all together for myself. So, then I'm the manufacturer or OEM of my computer. Q. 1. For what the OP is talking about, where do I have threats to privacy, control of my machine and its data, and security? Q. 2. To use the machine I plugged together, do I have to get some keys from Microsoft? Q. 3. Suppose I install operating systems from Microsoft, e.g., Windows 7 64 bit Professional, Windows 10, Windows Server or the database SQL Server. Then do I have to get keys from Microsoft? Q. 4. Will the support processor and its software, whatever they are called, on their own without my knowledge or approval use the Internet to send/receive data from/to my computer, modify the data on my hard disks, etc.? Thanks.

timonovici 10y ago
1. The motherboad has a ARC chip, that loads a firmware included in the flash chip. That ARC chip is supposedly inside the PCH (Platform Controller Hub, a north bridge on steroids) - it's efectively in the silicon, you can't remove it. 2. Depends on the motherboard and the BIOS written in the flash chip 3. No. They are already signed. 4. If somebody controls them and ask them to do so. All that's necesary is a LAN connection (or wifi, but only with Intel chips) and power. The HDD is completely irrelevant, as is the OS.
- graycat 10y ago
  The motherboard I have in mind is the ASUS m5a97 r2.0. Back in October, 2015 I got a PDF on that motherboard at http://data.manualslib.com/pdf2/42/4150/414970-asus/m5a97_r20_user_manual.pdf?21746bed4ca8a7cf8dc1026baaa917b8&take=binary http://data.manualslib.com/pdf2/42/4150/414970-asus/m5a97_r2... Just checking, the PDF does mention the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) but not ARC or PCH. That ASUS manual does mention that the UEFI BIOS does offer automatic updating of the BIOS version; that feature, if enabled, does seem to raise security concerns. Looking at the UEFI page of Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_In... there is > UEFI can support remote diagnostics and repair of computers, even with no operating system installed.[3] which seems to raise some security concerns. Also it does appear that some people trying to install an operating system might encounter some mud wrestling. Maybe what I'm intending to do with Microsoft's Windows 7, 10, and Server will be easy enough. Thanks.

bubblethink 10y ago

While it would be great to liberate x86, more than 4 billion people in the world use mobile phones, and phones are beyond saving. x86 is in very healthy shape compared to the clusterfuck that is the smartphone industry. If you think that coreboot is a fringe project, you need to head over to replicant or neo900 to see what the fringe actually is.

hinkley 10y ago
I thought Apple was working on their own baseband chip? I assume that's what you're alluding to, yeah?
xvilka 10y ago
Well, then you can go deeper and check out baseband firmware liberation project - OsmocomBB [1], since baseband firmware in a far worse shape than applications firmware (and TrustZone firmware) in smartphone industry. [1] https://osmocom.org/projects/baseband https://osmocom.org/projects/baseband
- bubblethink 10y ago
  I don't think baseband can ever be truly free because of regulatory issues. The only realistic way of containing it would be through isolation.
  - adrianN 10y ago
    You could also change the regulatory framework.
  - unlmtd 10y ago
    So the revolutionary wars didn't happen?

narrator 10y ago

Want complete software freedom? How about the MIPS chips the Russian military uses[1]? Those don't have an NSA back door. Sucks you can't really buy them as they are only made for use in Russian military and government applications. "Last year, the Russian government announced that it doesn't want to rely on Intel and AMD chips from the U.S. anymore and will focus more on using homegrown chips from Russia." [1] http://www.tomshardware.com/news/baikal-t1-mips-cpu-omnishield-support,29178.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/baikal-t1-mips-cpu-omnishie...

memmcgee 10y ago
Those probably have Russian backdoors though.
- sattoshi 10y ago
  In most cases, a foreign gov spying on you is harmless.
  - c22 10y ago
    In most cases a foreign government spying on you is trading their insights with your government in order to sidestep domestic spying restrictions.
  - zipwitch 10y ago
    What are the chances that the access pass from the foreign government to actors you don't want spying on you: criminals or your own government's intel agencies?
theamk 10y ago
Well, the actual CPU cores are designed by Imagination Technologies, which are based in UK. I would not be so sure that they are fully safe. You can make an argument that it is still an improvement, because there are no obvious binary blobs required by the system. But in this case, I would recommend going for one of the many Chinese ARM cores -- at least you can buy them easily.
10y ago

benmward 10y ago

Mentioned back in 2014 iirc?

etiam 10y ago

Is "uncorrectable" still a valid description? There seems to have been some progress lately in eliminating ME that are not necessary? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13416378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13416378

amluto 10y ago

> These technologies, in turn, are used to implement various forms of remote control and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, including Secure Boot, which even now requires FOSS users to purchase a license from Microsoft to boot FOSS on affected machines that lack an appropriate Secure Boot override. I dislike the mandatory use of these features as much as the next nerd, but this is inaccurate FUD. Secure Boot is a code in flash that checks the signature of whatever you try to boot against some rather complicated policy. It's regular code and would work more or less the same on any platform that runs machine code off of ROM or flash. There's something that Intel calls, IIRC, "Verified Boot" that tries to prevent someone with an in-system programmer or desoldering skills from changing the flash, but that has nothing to do with the Management Engine either. And FOSS users don't need to purchase any license from anyone. They can use a tool like Linux Foundation's PreLoader or Red Hat's shim (open source but awkward to modify because you need the signed binary to boot on a stock system) to boot anything they like. No negotiations, no license, no communication with MS at all.

cyphar 10y ago
> > These technologies, in turn, are used to implement various forms of remote control and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, including Secure Boot, which even now requires FOSS users to purchase a license from Microsoft to boot FOSS on affected machines that lack an appropriate Secure Boot override. > I dislike the mandatory use of these features as much as the next nerd, but this is inaccurate FUD. Secure Boot is a code in flash that checks the signature of whatever you try to boot against some rather complicated policy. It's regular code and would work more or less the same on any platform that runs machine code off of ROM or flash. "Regular code" doesn't mean it's not proprietary, and doesn't mean that it's not concerning for free software users. > And FOSS users don't need to purchase any license from anyone. They can use a tool like Linux Foundation's PreLoader or Red Hat's shim (open source but awkward to modify because you need the signed binary to boot on a stock system) to boot anything they like. No negotiations, no license, no communication with MS at all. Those preloaders are signed by Microsoft. While it is a good hack for distributions at the moment, it doesn't mean that Microsoft is no longer in the loop. They still have an incredibly worrying amount of control over what can run on modern hardware.

getpost 10y ago

How is this not an anti-trust issue? Of course the government wants this capability to access anyone's system, so I assume nothing will be done. This has to be one of the worst things that has happened in the history of computing. EDIT: Handy for CBP use, I imagine.

bubblethink 10y ago
This has nothing to do with anti trust. Selling hardware doesn't require you provide software or the ability to run your desired software.

saurik 10y ago

> Major distributions have worked around this issue by purchasing a signing key from Microsoft for their binary packages, but the end user is unable to modify the signed software without a license from Microsoft, even though they have the source code available to them under the GPL. Is this an accurate description of what is happening? (I don't pay much attention to desktop systems: I spend most of my time concentrating on the ever-worsening mobile arena.) Do these "major distributions" come with a recent version of bash? As someone who develops software under the GPLv3 license, I would not want my software being distributed to these machines via this hack :/.

cyphar 10y ago
> > Major distributions have worked around this issue by purchasing a signing key from Microsoft for their binary packages, but the end user is unable to modify the signed software without a license from Microsoft, even though they have the source code available to them under the GPL. > Is this an accurate description of what is happening? (I don't pay much attention to desktop systems: I spend most of my time concentrating on the ever-worsening mobile arena.) Do these "major distributions" come with a recent version of bash? As someone who develops software under the GPLv3 license, I would not want my software being distributed to these machines via this hack :/. It's not entirely accurate. Effectively what most modern distributions do is that they have a "shim" which is signed by Microsoft. That shim then enrols the distribution's own UEFI keys on the laptop. So their kernel is signed with both their own key and Microsoft's key. This means that you can modify your code without "permission" from Microsoft. openSUSE, Fedora and Debian all employ this tactic so that our distributions can boot on newer laptops. Do I wish this wasn't necessary and that everything ran core boot? Yes. Is there a better way of handling this problem? Not as far as I know.
int_19h 10y ago
I don't think GPLv3 anti-DRM clauses would kick in here. They would if 1) someone was distributing a combination of a Secure Boot-only machine with your software installed on it, and 2) the loader (which is the only thing really validated by Secure Boot) would actually try to continue the chain of trust, and validate all the other bits, such that the user cannot run a modified version of your software. I'm pretty sure that neither of those is the case, however. Once the system boots using the signed loader, it's really just Linux, and you're free to replace the kernel and any bit of userspace as usual. Furthermore, I seriously doubt that anyone is selling machines with Linux preinstalled that have Secure Boot which cannot be turned off - simply because that would become known pretty fast, and even aside from licensing issues, would elicit a very hostile reaction from the community (and hence many potential buyers).

cathartes 10y ago

Good to see mention of Talos, even if it never came to fruition.

hashhar 10y ago

Am I missing something here? > Secure Boot, which even now requires FOSS users to purchase a license from Microsoft to boot FOSS on affected machines that lack an appropriate Secure Boot override. I recently installed rEFInd from source by using a self-singed certificate (signed the binary using it and enrolled the key into the EFI using mokutil) and it worked. I certainly didn't have to pay MS. I do know that rEFInd provides a key of their own (using the distro's shim) that obviously has trust rooted at MS.

upofadown 10y ago

>As Intel owns all rights to the x86 architecture, there will never be any new manufacturers licensed to make x86 chips ... This strikes me as the root problem here. How can one company be granted a monopoly on what is basically an instruction set? Particularly in the case of the instruction set our civilization runs on? Since I can't understand how something like this could happen I don't understand why any replacement architecture wouldn't end up being controlled by a single entity.

TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
I believe it's not the instruction set they have patents on per se, but rather on how to implement it efficiently.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  Which provides strong evidence that patents are the root of all evil.
bubblethink 10y ago
The legality of x86's ISA being copyrighted/patented aside, the x86 ISA isn't that attractive for any new endeavours. It's a very complex ISA which is incredibly difficult to decode. Internally, it is anyway converted to RISC style microops. So as a competitor, you don't really gain a whole lot by implementing the x86 ISA apart from the ability to run software without writing a new compiler. What's more important is the microarchitecture.