12 ms·

AMD has no plans to release PSP code

244 points by rnhmjoj 9y ago

askz 9y ago
Is there any good alternative to AMD or Intel processors? EDIT: Is there any good alternative to AMD or Intel processors? Like more open ones?
- _e 9y ago
  Depends on what you use a computer for. Atmel (Raspberry Pi) and Snapdragon (cell phone) chips come to mind.
  - ctz 9y ago
    Broadcom and Qualcomm, I think you'll find. Both of which are incredibly closed.
  - wolfgke 9y ago
    > Atmel (Raspberry Pi) The BCM2835/BCM2836/BCM2837 that is used in the RPi is made by Broadcom, not Atmel.
    - _e 9y ago
      Thank you for the correction.
  - simias 9y ago
    What make those better or more open in your mind? In my experience modern ARM SoCs aren't a whole lot more open than x86 CPUs.
- topspin 9y ago
  Raptor Engineering makes/may eventually make(?) the "Talos Secure Workstation" based on POWER8. They claim "schematics and libre (fully open and auditable) firmware also are included." Don't know; don't own one. A mere $5,300 gets/might get you an 8 core workstation. IBM makes POWER CPUs and you may assume that -- unless they've disclosed something -- no one other than IBM and the NSA really know if there are any unauditable "support" processors on the die. Beyond that the Raptor site mentions that there are still some bits you don't get to know about their system: "several pages will be redacted on the public schematic due to mandatory NDAs with a few of our support silicon vendors." Everything else is SOC/MCU stuff; nothing that approaches the capabilities of these Intel and AMD CPUs. You could hold out on older pre-ME/PSP systems until RISC-V goes through enough evolution and market success to achieve parity with then-contemporary devices, sometime around 2035 I'd guess... Answer to your question is, in most cases, simply no.
  - bubblethink 9y ago
    >until RISC-V goes through enough evolution and market success to achieve parity with then-contemporary devices, sometime around 2035 I'd guess... RISC-V just refers to the ISA, right ? An implementation by a vendor may still have ME/PSP like stuff, just like the x86 ISA has nothing to do with ME/PSP.
    - topspin 9y ago
      Sure. One can imagine a 64-bit 24 core RISC-V CPU with 60 billion transistors, all backdoored by some management processor. Perhaps by then the management CPU will be an x86 core running Linux. :)
simpleuser19 9y ago
I won't release any money to buy any Amd product. Just from now on Amd is a no option. I am just waiting for any libreboot system that I can rely on to spend my money on. Goodby Amd. For me you are a sank ship
faragon 9y ago
Are Ryzen and Threadripper affected? If so, I would change my opinion on AMD, and chose Intel instead for my next home computer.
- samtoday 9y ago
  Yes, all modern AMD processors have this. But Intel processors have an equivalent ""feature"", called the Intel Management Engine (ME). So take you pick really. A good FAQ is done by LibreBoot: https://libreboot.org/faq.html https://libreboot.org/faq.html
- etimberg 9y ago
  Intel does the exact same thing they just call it "Trusted Execution Technology" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_execution_environment#Implementations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_execution_environment#...
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > If so, I would change my opinion on AMD, and chose Intel instead for my next home computer. Intel already has Intel ME.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rnhmjoj 9y ago
  Every Intel CPU since 2006 and every AMD CPU since 2013 has this stuff. If you care about this possible solutions are: buy pre-2006/pre-2013 hardware; go through some procedure to remove the ME[1]; forget x86 entirely (ARM?) [1]: http://hackaday.com/2016/11/28/neutralizing-intels-management-engine/ http://hackaday.com/2016/11/28/neutralizing-intels-managemen...
Unklejoe 9y ago
One thing that kind of bothers me is that I keep seeing people justify this decision by mentioning that AMD may be using third party source code which they do not have the license to release. My issue with that is that I don’t see how it prevents AMD from releasing a super stripped down (essentially disabled), but still closed source version of the firmware. There may very well be a valid justification for not doing so - I just don’t know. An even better approach would be to allow the system to run without the firmware at all. If I remember correctly, some Intel machines will run for 30 minutes without the firmware, but will shut down after the time elapses. If true, that at least proves that it’s not essential for system operation. In the case of Intel, surely they could have disabled this 30 minute timer on the consumer CPUs (just like how they disable ECC support).
- cyphar 9y ago
  I think the justification is economic. They don't remove it because it's not clear that there is a market for not having ME. The reason (I think) they remove ECC support is that people are willing to pay extra for it, so they remove it so you are forced to pay extra. If they removed ME in consumer CPUs, they wouldn't sell any more consumer CPUs and their enterprise management system wouldn't be any more popular. There are also some additional problems. Intel ME is used by Linux quite heavily (rather than talking directly to the embedded controller) which means that certain things can become quite flaky. I have Coreboot on my X220 with me_cleaner, and my machine seems to freeze randomly (it's definitely not the 30-minute timer, I just think it's IO being deadlocked for some reason). While your machine may appear to work without ME, there are almost certainly features that won't work.
  - jonathanstrange 9y ago
    The interesting question is whether someone could reverse-engineer this and publish everything they find freely on the Internet? It surely can't be easy, but just imagine someone would do that, maybe even be so irresponsible as to publish exploits! That could become a nightmare for AMD and Intel!
    - 9y ago
sonium 9y ago
For everybody wondering: PSP stands for Platform Security Processor, a secure enclave in the processor and AMD's version of the Intel Management Engine. Quoting from Libreboot: As such, it has the ability to hide its own program code, scratch RAM, and any data it may have taken and stored from the lesser-privileged x86 system RAM (kernel encryption keys, login data, browsing history, keystrokes, who knows!). To make matters worse, the PSP theoretically has access to the entire system memory space (AMD either will not or cannot deny this, and it would seem to be required to allow the DRM “features” to work as intended), which means that it has at minimum MMIO-based access to the network controllers and any other PCI/PCIe peripherals installed on the system.
- dmead 9y ago
  thanks, i was thinking about handheld games and getting pretty confused.
  - Sharlin 9y ago
    I wondered when AMD had acquired the source code for Paint Shop Pro.
    - Carley34 9y ago
      ᶤ ᵇᵃˢᶤᶜᵃˡˡʸ ᵍᵉᵗ ᵖᵃᶤᵈ ᶤᶰ ᵗʰᵉ ʳᵃᶰᵍᵉ ᵒᶠ $9000-$11000 ᵃ ᵐᵒᶰᵗʰ ᶠʳᵒᵐ ʷᵒʳᵏᶤᶰᵍ ᵒᶰˡᶤᶰᵉ ᵃᵗ ʰᵒᵐᵉ. ᵃᶰʸᵒᶰᵉ ᵖʳᵉᵖᵃʳᵉᵈ ᵗᵒ ʷᵒʳᵏ ᵇᵃˢᶤᶜ ᶠʳᵉᵉˡᵃᶰᶜᵉ ʲᵒᵇˢ ᶠᵒʳ ᶠᵉʷ ʰ ᵃ ᵈᵃʸ ᶠʳᵒᵐ ʸᵒᵘʳ ˡᶤᵛᶤᶰᵍ ʳᵒᵒᵐ ᵃᶰᵈ ᵉᵃʳᶰ ᵈᵉᶜᵉᶰᵗ ᵖᵃʸᶜʰᵉᶜᵏ ᶠᵒʳ ᵈᵒᶤᶰᵍ ᶤᵗ... ------------>http://ow.ly/P0wk30aVXfN http://ow.ly/P0wk30aVXfN
    - growt 9y ago
      And I was thinking about Payment Service Providers. I guess every domain has their PSP :)
      - monknomo 9y ago
        Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning
GuiA 9y ago
Previous discussion here that gives more background about the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13781408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13781408 tl;dr: the PSP is a full computer that lives between the instructions that get sent to your CPU and what your CPU actually executes. It's obviously a huge security problem, because if a backdoor in the PSP gets exploited, you cannot trust your computer in any way, and there is no way for you to verify whether it is being exploited or not. AMD said they might open source it, but even that wouldn't do much to establish trust.
- calafrax 9y ago
  right, and releasing the source code is giving a map to criminals to allow them to hack it. The "no security through obscurity" theory is not entirely true in the real world. When you push up the cost (money and skill) of a hack then hackers will attack weaker components and so the likelihood of a hack is smaller. This code is highly secure and would require an enormous amount of specialist knowledge, equipment, and time to extract, analyze and exploit. The effort involved rules out rational profit motivated individuals because the costs are too high and there are plentiful opportunities for lower cost exploits. No company releases the source for their DRM code except to legitimately interested parties in controlled circumstances and that is the correct policy from a security perspective.
Entalpi 9y ago
For the uninitiated; what good does this PSP to the system?
- kobeya 9y ago
  It runs in god mode with access to anything and everything, and is completely hidden from even system mode software. With access to peripherals it can access the network and take remote commands, exfiltrate data, etc. If you've ever used a server they often have a nice feature where you send an authenticated command to them on a certain port and get it to shutoff, turn on, reboot, whatever. This is run from the PSP on AMD processors. Or maybe it has a remote backdoor put there by the NSA (or maybe just escrowed command and control keys) and ANY AMD device connected to the Internet can be controlled remotely by them at will. We have no way of knowing. Or if TLAs don't worry you, then maybe the code running on it has a 0-day vulnerability and every server out there is vulnerable to remote code execution + the ultimate privilege escalation and we don't know about. Or if that doesn't worry you, then maybe it'd at least be nice to be able to program it yourself and add new features, bug fixes, etc. Those are all good reasons for requesting open source PSP code.
  - zdkl 9y ago
    I don't mean to downplay this, but intel's doing it too with their management engine. Don't bash AMD for this specifically, at least now we-consumers have a realistic choice as to the purveyor of backdoors. It's... something?
    - kobeya 9y ago
      AMD has traditionally been a more consumer-friendly vendor and there was some hope that they might differentiate themselves from intel in this way, giving people concerned about this at least one major vendor to source their parts from. Alas, that is not the case.
    - quickben 9y ago
      At least AMD doesn't make lan cards. The Intel combo is scarier.
bo1024 9y ago
Very disappointed to hear this. A different decision would have definitely swayed me to buy AMD for my next processor.
- zdkl 9y ago
  You do know intel is doing the exact same thing? This isn't a differentiating attribute.
  - samtoday 9y ago
    Well, you can get a POWER{8,9} workstation [1]; which has a big selling point of having no ME/PSP processor. But it looks a bit expensive. [1] http://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/prerelease.php http://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/prerelease.php
    - wolfgke 9y ago
      I don't know the plans with TALOS II, but those who are interested in what happened to the original Talos Secure Workstation crowdfunding might be interested in the following article, which I think anybody, who is interested in how an alternative could look like, should read: > https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-secure-workstation/updates/the-state-of-owner-controlled-computing-as-talos-winds-down https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-s...
    - rnhmjoj 9y ago
      Wasn't the funding for Talos unsuccessful? Are they really going to release it?
    - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
      You can also use C201 arm Chromebook with libreboot (I do) to avoid concerns about a management engine.
  - mrec 9y ago
    If might have been if AMD were opening up and Intel weren't. EDIT to expand a bit since some people seem to be missing the point: hypothetically, GP might have preferred Intel on narrow technical criteria, but have been willing to override that preference for the sake of transparency. No transparency difference, no reason to override.
kronos29296 9y ago
Never heard about PSP before. Looks like another corner of the computer world in total lockdown and relies on security through obscurity. Not gonna work forever but keeps all but the talented people out. Problem is there are many talented people out there.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  > Not gonna work forever but keeps all but the talented people out. Problem is there are many talented people out there. I really wish it could be disabled because once these talented people are in; you, your antivirus or operating system would never know.
throw2016 9y ago
It's safe to assume hardware and software is completely and totally backdoored. It's done with NSLs and co-operation of companies or compromising employees, projects, standards and other tricks which are child's play for most government agencies. That makes the idea of using technology to gain some sort of privacy from state level actors with infinite resources and man power to thwart you a total nonstarter that can at best deliver a false sense of security and at worst more serious consequences for those who may need it. The bottom line is established power is paranoid and wants to monitor all communication whatever they may proclaim publicly and it appears from hind sight and what we now know they have always done it.
JepZ 9y ago
The sad thing is, we can be sure, that AMD is aware of the topic at the C-level and doesn't seem to act in the interest of the customer anyway. Just remember the Reddit AMA earlier this year: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_creators_of_athlon_radeon_and_other/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_crea...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
wolfgke 9y ago
Just for your information to help you do further research: AMD seems not to use the brand name "AMD PSP" anymore. Instead some years ago they began to use the name "AMD Secure Processor". Nevertheless it is just the same: Read the small footnore at http://www.amd.com/en-gb/innovations/software-technologies/security http://www.amd.com/en-gb/innovations/software-technologies/s... which begins with 'AMD Secure Processor (formerly “Platform Security Processor” or “PSP”)'.
executesorder66 9y ago
Guess I'll stick with Intel then. It seems like many in this thread get stuck on the idea that Intel "already has the ME, so what's the point?" The point is, I prefer Intel due to performance reasons. But I would have changed over to AMD permanently if they open sourced the PSP code, or if they removed the PSP entirely. That would have been their one competitive advantage, and now they've shat all over it, and lost many potential customers.
- lettergram 9y ago
  Price per performance AMD wins by far btw... Even on raw performance AMD is pretty close to comparable (i.e. I ran my top of the line intel i7 machine along side my top of the line AMD machine and there was no noticeable differences).
- kbhn 9y ago
  > and now they've shat all over it, and lost many potential customers. Yes, I'm sure people are turning away in droves from the most competitive AMD processor in a decade because they won't open source their version of ME. /s
  - johncolanduoni 9y ago
    For that matter, I'm sure significant amounts of people have heard about either IME or PSP and would make decisions on hardware purchases based on it.
  - ebcode 9y ago
    Not in "droves", you're right. BUT, there is a very small, privacy-conscious, vocal minority that does not want an obvious backdoor hiding in their CPU. I am one member of that minority, and I won't be purchasing from AMD again until they right this situation. It's similar to the gaming enthusiast market, though a lot smaller. You can market to that small segment for a big win, because gamers will shell out for the newest GPUs, talk up the hardware online, which leads to increased sales. If AMD would see the benefit of working with this privacy-conscious segment of the market, I believe they would also see, not a major, but also not an insignificant uptick in sales.
pcunite 9y ago
What can we do about this? This is completely unacceptable! Note, I'm not referring to the source code, I could care less, I'm referring to removing this obvious breach of privacy that will be used by governments.
- zanny 9y ago
  Don't support companies that use backdoor bullshit like this. That, however, limits you to POWER9 and Risc-V computers.
  - wolfgke 9y ago
    > That, however, limits you to POWER9 and Risc-V computers. Where can I buy a RISC-V computer? I.e. not only some microcontroller board "which is just a much faster Arduino", but a board that has the usual capabilities that one expects from a computer such as GPU, ethernet, USB jacks, audio in/out (either audio jack or via HDMI), possibility to connect a SSD, and perhaps an SD card slot and RAM slots to increase the RAM if one desires.
westmeal 9y ago
Looks like high performance comes at a security cost. It's a good thing projects like RISC V and certain boards like the TALOS exist or else it'd be a hell of a time. Has anyone here tried some tech from SiFive? They appear to have RISC V boards for sale.
- Narishma 9y ago
  RISC-V is only available in microcontroller form for now.
simpleuser19 9y ago
I will not buy any AMD product.
simias 9y ago
I'm always mildly surprised to find people posturing that having closed source modules in the CPU is completely intolerable while basically all modern hardware is closed source. Even if they release the source code for the PSP they won't release the verilog of the underlying IP to see how it's implemented. And you'd still run a closed source CPU, with a closed source GPU and a closed source USB controller and a closed source PCI controller etc etc... How many of the people complaining about the lack of PSP source code are willingly running a closed source GPU driver? How many of them are running Windows, Mac OS or some other closed source operating system? It reminds me of when people were blowing a fuse over the linux kernel's use of Intel's built-in PRNG. I'm all for open hardware design but focusing on these particular modules is a bit counterproductive I think, if tomorrow AMD or Intel were to release CPUs without this particular "feature" the surface of attack would not shrink massively. Hardware is open or it's not. Nowadays it's overwhelmingly not open, so you have to blindly trust AMD, Intel and the variour ARM SoC vendors not to fuck you over[1] and having the PSP source code wouldn't change much about that. [1] They probably do.
- Tharkun 9y ago
  The scope matters. You can get a machine to run reasonably well without relying on closed source graphics drivers. If your GPU firmware is evil in some way, it's on your GPU and you can be pretty confident it won't compromise the rest of your machine or your network. If a driver is compromised, there will be signs of abnormal behaviour (you can inspect what software on your machine is doing at runtime). With AMD's PSP or Intel's ME, there are no such limitations in how bad things can get. These things could take all the data you have in memory, connect to some shady network location and dump all the data. All the while there is no trace of that activity in your OS, because of none of this nonsense lives in your OS.
  - simias 9y ago
    I guess my point is that as long as the hardware itself is closed source you have to trust the vendor anyway. Suppose the PSP source code was open sourced, how can you be sure it's actually what's being run by the CPU? How can you know certain instructions aren't backdoored somehow? It makes it a bit more difficult to implement such backdoors of course, but it's still perfectly doable. Again, I'm happy that people value their privacy and campaign for more open source but it seems a bit myopic to put all our attention on this tiny part of the problem. The risk is that if tomorrow AMD decides to actually open source the PSP many people will think that we won and the battle is over when we've just removed one of thousands of possible attack vectors.
jancsika 9y ago
Curious what giants like Google do in these cases. I assume in their vast farms of servers there are post-2006 intel and/or post-2013 amd chips. Do they simply use the features these processors and their OSes provide? Do they get a special deal to look under the hood? Something else entirely?
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > Curious what giants like Google do in these cases. I assume in their vast farms of servers there are post-2006 intel and/or post-2013 amd chips. As far as I know Google mostly uses Xeons in their server farms, but also some POWER9 servers (for example cf. https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-Zaius-Google-and-Rackspaces-open-server-running-IBM-POWER9.html https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-Zai...) - many people say this is "some kind of Google's insurance against Intel/x86": > Do they get a special deal to look under the hood? It is well-known that the largest buyers of Xeons (plausible names are Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba and some others) have access to special versions of Xeons that have special features enabled that are disabled in the versions sold to the general public. One article giving hints into this direction is > http://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-offers-two-customers-skylake-xeon-cpus/ http://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-offe... One such feature that is talked about is having access to an FPGA (why did Intel buy Altera again) and it is well-known that Microsoft uses FPGAs for Bing: > https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/10/17/the_moonshot_that_succeeded/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/10/17/the_moonshot_tha... > https://www.golem.de/news/microsoft-weil-cpus-zu-langsam-sind-muessen-fpgas-her-1705-127784.html https://www.golem.de/news/microsoft-weil-cpus-zu-langsam-sin... [German article] With this information I would bet that they have a special deal to look under the hood.
jincheker 9y ago
F*k noobs manipulated by these nonsense. Intel does the same thing, if you want freedom, build your own
- AdmiralAsshat 9y ago
  The number of people on this planet with the singular knowledge to build a modern processor, from scratch, I would estimate is well under 1,000. The number with the knowledge and the resources to do so is even lower. Telling someone if they don't like their processor choices to "build their own" is like telling someone to build their own ISP/Telco service if they're not happy with the sole Comcast offering in their area.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    Yeah the number people who can, by themselves or with a small team, build a modern processor that's half as fast or half as efficient as something AMD put out 10 years ago is so small it's actually probably a negative number. Fabs are really, really, really really really expensive and processors are really hard to design.
  - snakeanus 9y ago
    > The number of people on this planet with the singular knowledge to build a modern processor, from scratch, I would estimate is well under 1,000 I am pretty sure that most EE/CE students at some point or another implement a basic processor on a fpga. That being said, I am not sure how many of them would be able to build a "modern" one.
mtgx 9y ago
Backdoor confirmed.
kennydude 9y ago
Side tracking, but ARM really is everywhere now. Even inside x86 chips!
lost_name 9y ago
Is there any reason why people were (seemingly) expecting this, or was it just an idea that gained momentum that AMD never actually suggested or considered?
- digitalzombie 9y ago
  It was brought up in a subreddit thread and an AMD PR replied to it saying they'll look into it or something a long the line. The thread was basically everybody saying they would buy AMD if they release the code because they'll be the only friend CPU towards the open source community. This was actually awhile ago, I was the reading the thread too.
sspiff 9y ago
I think this comment on the reddit thread is a pretty accurate take on the whole thing: "Not that anyone could have seriously expected that. If AMD makes a business decision to possibly open source the PSP now or in the near future, the first results will be visible 2-3 years later, at best. However, it is VERY likely that there are legal barriers, such as 3rd party code. Maybe they are using a 3rd party RTOS that they cannot publish the sources of? Or maybe some DRM part of the PSP firmware can't be published? What I'd personally like to see is a minimal PSP implementation (without any noticeable features) that's Open Source, with reproducible build process and a binary of that signed by AMD." (Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6o2e6t/amd_is_not_opensourcing_their_psp_code_anytime/dke3tja/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6o2e6t/amd_is_not_open...)
- bryanbuckley 9y ago
  There is a reply to that comment that more or less confirms that's at least part of the issue (i.e. Trustonic owns the rights).
- qb45 9y ago
  > What I'd personally like to see is a minimal PSP implementation (without any noticeable features) that's Open Source, with reproducible build process and a binary of that signed by AMD. There are 3rd party efforts to produce something similar on Intel platforms: https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/wiki/How-does-it-work%3F https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/wiki/How-does-it-work%3F https://puri.sm/posts/reverse-engineering-the-intel-management-engine-romp-module/ https://puri.sm/posts/reverse-engineering-the-intel-manageme...
floatboth 9y ago
We don't need the fucking code, we need it to just be OPTIONAL. Just an option to FULLY DISABLE IT. Screw everyone who said "open source it" instead of "disable it" >_<
logicchains 9y ago
I wonder, is there some way mathematically that software could be written that's still secure (or unfeasibly difficult to crack) when running on a system with AMD's PSP or Intel's IME?
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  There isn't. PSP/IME can modify any software's code or data at any time.
api 9y ago
I'd settle for the ability to verifiably disable the PSP.
pksadiq 9y ago
Open sourcing the PSP code (or probably any other firmware) may not help protect you (or anyone) in terms of security or privacy. Here is where open source is different from free software, and this is why free software is better than open source. Say for example, ddwrt, a very popular firmware used in several routers. Or simply saying, Linux (kernel) + busybox, a very popular combination of some open source codes used in several embedded systems: They are simply open source when they run on those systems, not free software. You can't replace their code with some (custom) versions most of the time. All you get is the source code, you may not be allowed to run custom version. You may not even be able to confirm if the code they gave is the code that is actually being run on those devices. As always said, that is enough to fit to the terms of "open source". And yes, just another reason why free software is (almost always) better than open source.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  Agreed, but open-source is a necessary precondition for free software.
vesak 9y ago
Excuse my French but what a fucking surprise. Who ever thought they would? That's right, I did. Hence I'm a bit pissed off right now. But even though I was dumb enough to believe, at least I was smart enough to wait for it, and did not waste my money.
snakeanus 9y ago
If only there was a foss cpu that you could easily install on a fpga - that would be really great.
sliken 9y ago
Isn't this exactly what encrypted ram is for? Insecure DMA access to all of memory isn't such a big deal if the contents are encrypted.

244 points by rnhmjoj 9y ago

askz 9y ago

Is there any good alternative to AMD or Intel processors? EDIT: Is there any good alternative to AMD or Intel processors? Like more open ones?

_e 9y ago
Depends on what you use a computer for. Atmel (Raspberry Pi) and Snapdragon (cell phone) chips come to mind.
- ctz 9y ago
  Broadcom and Qualcomm, I think you'll find. Both of which are incredibly closed.
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > Atmel (Raspberry Pi) The BCM2835/BCM2836/BCM2837 that is used in the RPi is made by Broadcom, not Atmel.
  - _e 9y ago
    Thank you for the correction.
- simias 9y ago
  What make those better or more open in your mind? In my experience modern ARM SoCs aren't a whole lot more open than x86 CPUs.
topspin 9y ago
Raptor Engineering makes/may eventually make(?) the "Talos Secure Workstation" based on POWER8. They claim "schematics and libre (fully open and auditable) firmware also are included." Don't know; don't own one. A mere $5,300 gets/might get you an 8 core workstation. IBM makes POWER CPUs and you may assume that -- unless they've disclosed something -- no one other than IBM and the NSA really know if there are any unauditable "support" processors on the die. Beyond that the Raptor site mentions that there are still some bits you don't get to know about their system: "several pages will be redacted on the public schematic due to mandatory NDAs with a few of our support silicon vendors." Everything else is SOC/MCU stuff; nothing that approaches the capabilities of these Intel and AMD CPUs. You could hold out on older pre-ME/PSP systems until RISC-V goes through enough evolution and market success to achieve parity with then-contemporary devices, sometime around 2035 I'd guess... Answer to your question is, in most cases, simply no.
- bubblethink 9y ago
  >until RISC-V goes through enough evolution and market success to achieve parity with then-contemporary devices, sometime around 2035 I'd guess... RISC-V just refers to the ISA, right ? An implementation by a vendor may still have ME/PSP like stuff, just like the x86 ISA has nothing to do with ME/PSP.
  - topspin 9y ago
    Sure. One can imagine a 64-bit 24 core RISC-V CPU with 60 billion transistors, all backdoored by some management processor. Perhaps by then the management CPU will be an x86 core running Linux. :)

simpleuser19 9y ago

I won't release any money to buy any Amd product. Just from now on Amd is a no option. I am just waiting for any libreboot system that I can rely on to spend my money on. Goodby Amd. For me you are a sank ship

faragon 9y ago

Are Ryzen and Threadripper affected? If so, I would change my opinion on AMD, and chose Intel instead for my next home computer.

samtoday 9y ago
Yes, all modern AMD processors have this. But Intel processors have an equivalent ""feature"", called the Intel Management Engine (ME). So take you pick really. A good FAQ is done by LibreBoot: https://libreboot.org/faq.html https://libreboot.org/faq.html
etimberg 9y ago
Intel does the exact same thing they just call it "Trusted Execution Technology" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_execution_environment#Implementations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_execution_environment#...
wolfgke 9y ago
> If so, I would change my opinion on AMD, and chose Intel instead for my next home computer. Intel already has Intel ME.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rnhmjoj 9y ago
Every Intel CPU since 2006 and every AMD CPU since 2013 has this stuff. If you care about this possible solutions are: buy pre-2006/pre-2013 hardware; go through some procedure to remove the ME[1]; forget x86 entirely (ARM?) [1]: http://hackaday.com/2016/11/28/neutralizing-intels-management-engine/ http://hackaday.com/2016/11/28/neutralizing-intels-managemen...

Unklejoe 9y ago

One thing that kind of bothers me is that I keep seeing people justify this decision by mentioning that AMD may be using third party source code which they do not have the license to release. My issue with that is that I don’t see how it prevents AMD from releasing a super stripped down (essentially disabled), but still closed source version of the firmware. There may very well be a valid justification for not doing so - I just don’t know. An even better approach would be to allow the system to run without the firmware at all. If I remember correctly, some Intel machines will run for 30 minutes without the firmware, but will shut down after the time elapses. If true, that at least proves that it’s not essential for system operation. In the case of Intel, surely they could have disabled this 30 minute timer on the consumer CPUs (just like how they disable ECC support).

cyphar 9y ago
I think the justification is economic. They don't remove it because it's not clear that there is a market for not having ME. The reason (I think) they remove ECC support is that people are willing to pay extra for it, so they remove it so you are forced to pay extra. If they removed ME in consumer CPUs, they wouldn't sell any more consumer CPUs and their enterprise management system wouldn't be any more popular. There are also some additional problems. Intel ME is used by Linux quite heavily (rather than talking directly to the embedded controller) which means that certain things can become quite flaky. I have Coreboot on my X220 with me_cleaner, and my machine seems to freeze randomly (it's definitely not the 30-minute timer, I just think it's IO being deadlocked for some reason). While your machine may appear to work without ME, there are almost certainly features that won't work.
- jonathanstrange 9y ago
  The interesting question is whether someone could reverse-engineer this and publish everything they find freely on the Internet? It surely can't be easy, but just imagine someone would do that, maybe even be so irresponsible as to publish exploits! That could become a nightmare for AMD and Intel!
  - 9y ago

sonium 9y ago

For everybody wondering: PSP stands for Platform Security Processor, a secure enclave in the processor and AMD's version of the Intel Management Engine. Quoting from Libreboot: As such, it has the ability to hide its own program code, scratch RAM, and any data it may have taken and stored from the lesser-privileged x86 system RAM (kernel encryption keys, login data, browsing history, keystrokes, who knows!). To make matters worse, the PSP theoretically has access to the entire system memory space (AMD either will not or cannot deny this, and it would seem to be required to allow the DRM “features” to work as intended), which means that it has at minimum MMIO-based access to the network controllers and any other PCI/PCIe peripherals installed on the system.

dmead 9y ago
thanks, i was thinking about handheld games and getting pretty confused.
- Sharlin 9y ago
  I wondered when AMD had acquired the source code for Paint Shop Pro.
  - Carley34 9y ago
    ᶤ ᵇᵃˢᶤᶜᵃˡˡʸ ᵍᵉᵗ ᵖᵃᶤᵈ ᶤᶰ ᵗʰᵉ ʳᵃᶰᵍᵉ ᵒᶠ $9000-$11000 ᵃ ᵐᵒᶰᵗʰ ᶠʳᵒᵐ ʷᵒʳᵏᶤᶰᵍ ᵒᶰˡᶤᶰᵉ ᵃᵗ ʰᵒᵐᵉ. ᵃᶰʸᵒᶰᵉ ᵖʳᵉᵖᵃʳᵉᵈ ᵗᵒ ʷᵒʳᵏ ᵇᵃˢᶤᶜ ᶠʳᵉᵉˡᵃᶰᶜᵉ ʲᵒᵇˢ ᶠᵒʳ ᶠᵉʷ ʰ ᵃ ᵈᵃʸ ᶠʳᵒᵐ ʸᵒᵘʳ ˡᶤᵛᶤᶰᵍ ʳᵒᵒᵐ ᵃᶰᵈ ᵉᵃʳᶰ ᵈᵉᶜᵉᶰᵗ ᵖᵃʸᶜʰᵉᶜᵏ ᶠᵒʳ ᵈᵒᶤᶰᵍ ᶤᵗ... ------------>http://ow.ly/P0wk30aVXfN http://ow.ly/P0wk30aVXfN
  - growt 9y ago
    And I was thinking about Payment Service Providers. I guess every domain has their PSP :)
    - monknomo 9y ago
      Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning

GuiA 9y ago

Previous discussion here that gives more background about the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13781408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13781408 tl;dr: the PSP is a full computer that lives between the instructions that get sent to your CPU and what your CPU actually executes. It's obviously a huge security problem, because if a backdoor in the PSP gets exploited, you cannot trust your computer in any way, and there is no way for you to verify whether it is being exploited or not. AMD said they might open source it, but even that wouldn't do much to establish trust.

calafrax 9y ago
right, and releasing the source code is giving a map to criminals to allow them to hack it. The "no security through obscurity" theory is not entirely true in the real world. When you push up the cost (money and skill) of a hack then hackers will attack weaker components and so the likelihood of a hack is smaller. This code is highly secure and would require an enormous amount of specialist knowledge, equipment, and time to extract, analyze and exploit. The effort involved rules out rational profit motivated individuals because the costs are too high and there are plentiful opportunities for lower cost exploits. No company releases the source for their DRM code except to legitimately interested parties in controlled circumstances and that is the correct policy from a security perspective.

Entalpi 9y ago

For the uninitiated; what good does this PSP to the system?

kobeya 9y ago
It runs in god mode with access to anything and everything, and is completely hidden from even system mode software. With access to peripherals it can access the network and take remote commands, exfiltrate data, etc. If you've ever used a server they often have a nice feature where you send an authenticated command to them on a certain port and get it to shutoff, turn on, reboot, whatever. This is run from the PSP on AMD processors. Or maybe it has a remote backdoor put there by the NSA (or maybe just escrowed command and control keys) and ANY AMD device connected to the Internet can be controlled remotely by them at will. We have no way of knowing. Or if TLAs don't worry you, then maybe the code running on it has a 0-day vulnerability and every server out there is vulnerable to remote code execution + the ultimate privilege escalation and we don't know about. Or if that doesn't worry you, then maybe it'd at least be nice to be able to program it yourself and add new features, bug fixes, etc. Those are all good reasons for requesting open source PSP code.
- zdkl 9y ago
  I don't mean to downplay this, but intel's doing it too with their management engine. Don't bash AMD for this specifically, at least now we-consumers have a realistic choice as to the purveyor of backdoors. It's... something?
  - kobeya 9y ago
    AMD has traditionally been a more consumer-friendly vendor and there was some hope that they might differentiate themselves from intel in this way, giving people concerned about this at least one major vendor to source their parts from. Alas, that is not the case.
  - quickben 9y ago
    At least AMD doesn't make lan cards. The Intel combo is scarier.

bo1024 9y ago

Very disappointed to hear this. A different decision would have definitely swayed me to buy AMD for my next processor.

zdkl 9y ago
You do know intel is doing the exact same thing? This isn't a differentiating attribute.
- samtoday 9y ago
  Well, you can get a POWER{8,9} workstation [1]; which has a big selling point of having no ME/PSP processor. But it looks a bit expensive. [1] http://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/prerelease.php http://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/prerelease.php
  - wolfgke 9y ago
    I don't know the plans with TALOS II, but those who are interested in what happened to the original Talos Secure Workstation crowdfunding might be interested in the following article, which I think anybody, who is interested in how an alternative could look like, should read: > https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-secure-workstation/updates/the-state-of-owner-controlled-computing-as-talos-winds-down https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-s...
  - rnhmjoj 9y ago
    Wasn't the funding for Talos unsuccessful? Are they really going to release it?
  - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
    You can also use C201 arm Chromebook with libreboot (I do) to avoid concerns about a management engine.
- mrec 9y ago
  If might have been if AMD were opening up and Intel weren't. EDIT to expand a bit since some people seem to be missing the point: hypothetically, GP might have preferred Intel on narrow technical criteria, but have been willing to override that preference for the sake of transparency. No transparency difference, no reason to override.

kronos29296 9y ago

Never heard about PSP before. Looks like another corner of the computer world in total lockdown and relies on security through obscurity. Not gonna work forever but keeps all but the talented people out. Problem is there are many talented people out there.

sangnoir 9y ago
> Not gonna work forever but keeps all but the talented people out. Problem is there are many talented people out there. I really wish it could be disabled because once these talented people are in; you, your antivirus or operating system would never know.

throw2016 9y ago

It's safe to assume hardware and software is completely and totally backdoored. It's done with NSLs and co-operation of companies or compromising employees, projects, standards and other tricks which are child's play for most government agencies. That makes the idea of using technology to gain some sort of privacy from state level actors with infinite resources and man power to thwart you a total nonstarter that can at best deliver a false sense of security and at worst more serious consequences for those who may need it. The bottom line is established power is paranoid and wants to monitor all communication whatever they may proclaim publicly and it appears from hind sight and what we now know they have always done it.

JepZ 9y ago

The sad thing is, we can be sure, that AMD is aware of the topic at the C-level and doesn't seem to act in the interest of the customer anyway. Just remember the Reddit AMA earlier this year: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_creators_of_athlon_radeon_and_other/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_crea...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

wolfgke 9y ago

Just for your information to help you do further research: AMD seems not to use the brand name "AMD PSP" anymore. Instead some years ago they began to use the name "AMD Secure Processor". Nevertheless it is just the same: Read the small footnore at http://www.amd.com/en-gb/innovations/software-technologies/security http://www.amd.com/en-gb/innovations/software-technologies/s... which begins with 'AMD Secure Processor (formerly “Platform Security Processor” or “PSP”)'.

executesorder66 9y ago

Guess I'll stick with Intel then. It seems like many in this thread get stuck on the idea that Intel "already has the ME, so what's the point?" The point is, I prefer Intel due to performance reasons. But I would have changed over to AMD permanently if they open sourced the PSP code, or if they removed the PSP entirely. That would have been their one competitive advantage, and now they've shat all over it, and lost many potential customers.

lettergram 9y ago
Price per performance AMD wins by far btw... Even on raw performance AMD is pretty close to comparable (i.e. I ran my top of the line intel i7 machine along side my top of the line AMD machine and there was no noticeable differences).
kbhn 9y ago
> and now they've shat all over it, and lost many potential customers. Yes, I'm sure people are turning away in droves from the most competitive AMD processor in a decade because they won't open source their version of ME. /s
- johncolanduoni 9y ago
  For that matter, I'm sure significant amounts of people have heard about either IME or PSP and would make decisions on hardware purchases based on it.
- ebcode 9y ago
  Not in "droves", you're right. BUT, there is a very small, privacy-conscious, vocal minority that does not want an obvious backdoor hiding in their CPU. I am one member of that minority, and I won't be purchasing from AMD again until they right this situation. It's similar to the gaming enthusiast market, though a lot smaller. You can market to that small segment for a big win, because gamers will shell out for the newest GPUs, talk up the hardware online, which leads to increased sales. If AMD would see the benefit of working with this privacy-conscious segment of the market, I believe they would also see, not a major, but also not an insignificant uptick in sales.

pcunite 9y ago

What can we do about this? This is completely unacceptable! Note, I'm not referring to the source code, I could care less, I'm referring to removing this obvious breach of privacy that will be used by governments.

zanny 9y ago
Don't support companies that use backdoor bullshit like this. That, however, limits you to POWER9 and Risc-V computers.
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > That, however, limits you to POWER9 and Risc-V computers. Where can I buy a RISC-V computer? I.e. not only some microcontroller board "which is just a much faster Arduino", but a board that has the usual capabilities that one expects from a computer such as GPU, ethernet, USB jacks, audio in/out (either audio jack or via HDMI), possibility to connect a SSD, and perhaps an SD card slot and RAM slots to increase the RAM if one desires.

westmeal 9y ago

Looks like high performance comes at a security cost. It's a good thing projects like RISC V and certain boards like the TALOS exist or else it'd be a hell of a time. Has anyone here tried some tech from SiFive? They appear to have RISC V boards for sale.

Narishma 9y ago
RISC-V is only available in microcontroller form for now.

simpleuser19 9y ago

I will not buy any AMD product.

simias 9y ago

I'm always mildly surprised to find people posturing that having closed source modules in the CPU is completely intolerable while basically all modern hardware is closed source. Even if they release the source code for the PSP they won't release the verilog of the underlying IP to see how it's implemented. And you'd still run a closed source CPU, with a closed source GPU and a closed source USB controller and a closed source PCI controller etc etc... How many of the people complaining about the lack of PSP source code are willingly running a closed source GPU driver? How many of them are running Windows, Mac OS or some other closed source operating system? It reminds me of when people were blowing a fuse over the linux kernel's use of Intel's built-in PRNG. I'm all for open hardware design but focusing on these particular modules is a bit counterproductive I think, if tomorrow AMD or Intel were to release CPUs without this particular "feature" the surface of attack would not shrink massively. Hardware is open or it's not. Nowadays it's overwhelmingly not open, so you have to blindly trust AMD, Intel and the variour ARM SoC vendors not to fuck you over[1] and having the PSP source code wouldn't change much about that. [1] They probably do.

Tharkun 9y ago
The scope matters. You can get a machine to run reasonably well without relying on closed source graphics drivers. If your GPU firmware is evil in some way, it's on your GPU and you can be pretty confident it won't compromise the rest of your machine or your network. If a driver is compromised, there will be signs of abnormal behaviour (you can inspect what software on your machine is doing at runtime). With AMD's PSP or Intel's ME, there are no such limitations in how bad things can get. These things could take all the data you have in memory, connect to some shady network location and dump all the data. All the while there is no trace of that activity in your OS, because of none of this nonsense lives in your OS.
- simias 9y ago
  I guess my point is that as long as the hardware itself is closed source you have to trust the vendor anyway. Suppose the PSP source code was open sourced, how can you be sure it's actually what's being run by the CPU? How can you know certain instructions aren't backdoored somehow? It makes it a bit more difficult to implement such backdoors of course, but it's still perfectly doable. Again, I'm happy that people value their privacy and campaign for more open source but it seems a bit myopic to put all our attention on this tiny part of the problem. The risk is that if tomorrow AMD decides to actually open source the PSP many people will think that we won and the battle is over when we've just removed one of thousands of possible attack vectors.

jancsika 9y ago

Curious what giants like Google do in these cases. I assume in their vast farms of servers there are post-2006 intel and/or post-2013 amd chips. Do they simply use the features these processors and their OSes provide? Do they get a special deal to look under the hood? Something else entirely?

wolfgke 9y ago
> Curious what giants like Google do in these cases. I assume in their vast farms of servers there are post-2006 intel and/or post-2013 amd chips. As far as I know Google mostly uses Xeons in their server farms, but also some POWER9 servers (for example cf. https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-Zaius-Google-and-Rackspaces-open-server-running-IBM-POWER9.html https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-Zai...) - many people say this is "some kind of Google's insurance against Intel/x86": > Do they get a special deal to look under the hood? It is well-known that the largest buyers of Xeons (plausible names are Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba and some others) have access to special versions of Xeons that have special features enabled that are disabled in the versions sold to the general public. One article giving hints into this direction is > http://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-offers-two-customers-skylake-xeon-cpus/ http://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-offe... One such feature that is talked about is having access to an FPGA (why did Intel buy Altera again) and it is well-known that Microsoft uses FPGAs for Bing: > https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/10/17/the_moonshot_that_succeeded/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/10/17/the_moonshot_tha... > https://www.golem.de/news/microsoft-weil-cpus-zu-langsam-sind-muessen-fpgas-her-1705-127784.html https://www.golem.de/news/microsoft-weil-cpus-zu-langsam-sin... [German article] With this information I would bet that they have a special deal to look under the hood.

jincheker 9y ago

F*k noobs manipulated by these nonsense. Intel does the same thing, if you want freedom, build your own

AdmiralAsshat 9y ago
The number of people on this planet with the singular knowledge to build a modern processor, from scratch, I would estimate is well under 1,000. The number with the knowledge and the resources to do so is even lower. Telling someone if they don't like their processor choices to "build their own" is like telling someone to build their own ISP/Telco service if they're not happy with the sole Comcast offering in their area.
- freehunter 9y ago
  Yeah the number people who can, by themselves or with a small team, build a modern processor that's half as fast or half as efficient as something AMD put out 10 years ago is so small it's actually probably a negative number. Fabs are really, really, really really really expensive and processors are really hard to design.
- snakeanus 9y ago
  > The number of people on this planet with the singular knowledge to build a modern processor, from scratch, I would estimate is well under 1,000 I am pretty sure that most EE/CE students at some point or another implement a basic processor on a fpga. That being said, I am not sure how many of them would be able to build a "modern" one.

mtgx 9y ago

Backdoor confirmed.

kennydude 9y ago

Side tracking, but ARM really is everywhere now. Even inside x86 chips!

lost_name 9y ago

Is there any reason why people were (seemingly) expecting this, or was it just an idea that gained momentum that AMD never actually suggested or considered?

digitalzombie 9y ago
It was brought up in a subreddit thread and an AMD PR replied to it saying they'll look into it or something a long the line. The thread was basically everybody saying they would buy AMD if they release the code because they'll be the only friend CPU towards the open source community. This was actually awhile ago, I was the reading the thread too.

sspiff 9y ago

I think this comment on the reddit thread is a pretty accurate take on the whole thing: "Not that anyone could have seriously expected that. If AMD makes a business decision to possibly open source the PSP now or in the near future, the first results will be visible 2-3 years later, at best. However, it is VERY likely that there are legal barriers, such as 3rd party code. Maybe they are using a 3rd party RTOS that they cannot publish the sources of? Or maybe some DRM part of the PSP firmware can't be published? What I'd personally like to see is a minimal PSP implementation (without any noticeable features) that's Open Source, with reproducible build process and a binary of that signed by AMD." (Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6o2e6t/amd_is_not_opensourcing_their_psp_code_anytime/dke3tja/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6o2e6t/amd_is_not_open...)

bryanbuckley 9y ago
There is a reply to that comment that more or less confirms that's at least part of the issue (i.e. Trustonic owns the rights).
qb45 9y ago
> What I'd personally like to see is a minimal PSP implementation (without any noticeable features) that's Open Source, with reproducible build process and a binary of that signed by AMD. There are 3rd party efforts to produce something similar on Intel platforms: https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/wiki/How-does-it-work%3F https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/wiki/How-does-it-work%3F https://puri.sm/posts/reverse-engineering-the-intel-management-engine-romp-module/ https://puri.sm/posts/reverse-engineering-the-intel-manageme...

floatboth 9y ago

We don't need the fucking code, we need it to just be OPTIONAL. Just an option to FULLY DISABLE IT. Screw everyone who said "open source it" instead of "disable it" >_<

logicchains 9y ago

I wonder, is there some way mathematically that software could be written that's still secure (or unfeasibly difficult to crack) when running on a system with AMD's PSP or Intel's IME?

aeorgnoieang 9y ago
There isn't. PSP/IME can modify any software's code or data at any time.

api 9y ago

I'd settle for the ability to verifiably disable the PSP.

pksadiq 9y ago

Open sourcing the PSP code (or probably any other firmware) may not help protect you (or anyone) in terms of security or privacy. Here is where open source is different from free software, and this is why free software is better than open source. Say for example, ddwrt, a very popular firmware used in several routers. Or simply saying, Linux (kernel) + busybox, a very popular combination of some open source codes used in several embedded systems: They are simply open source when they run on those systems, not free software. You can't replace their code with some (custom) versions most of the time. All you get is the source code, you may not be allowed to run custom version. You may not even be able to confirm if the code they gave is the code that is actually being run on those devices. As always said, that is enough to fit to the terms of "open source". And yes, just another reason why free software is (almost always) better than open source.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
Agreed, but open-source is a necessary precondition for free software.

vesak 9y ago

Excuse my French but what a fucking surprise. Who ever thought they would? That's right, I did. Hence I'm a bit pissed off right now. But even though I was dumb enough to believe, at least I was smart enough to wait for it, and did not waste my money.

snakeanus 9y ago

If only there was a foss cpu that you could easily install on a fpga - that would be really great.

sliken 9y ago

Isn't this exactly what encrypted ram is for? Insecure DMA access to all of memory isn't such a big deal if the contents are encrypted.