8 ms·

It seems strange to me that the European Union is allowing this. The fact that a foreign company has a backdoor in every computer running in European countries

by jknz 9y ago

It seems strange to me that the European Union is allowing this. The fact that a foreign company has a backdoor in every computer running in European countries is so concerning on so many levels. Defense ministers from European countries should wake up and outlaw this. Of course, there is no specificity to the EU here -- this applies to Russia, China and other countries too. Edit: maybe Intel is already eligible to a € multiple Billions fine from the EU based on this? (Disclaimer: I have no clue about how such fine works).

amelius 9y ago
The EU has one very strong negotiation point: ASML. Without that company, Intel wouldn't even be able to produce their CPUs.
- n0ric 9y ago
  It should be noted that ASML pretty much has an monopoly on the EUV Lithography market... At least that's what they said at the CYMER (Subsidiary of ASML) tour I went to recently. I'm not exactly sure about the DUV market, so I won't comment on it.
- selectodude 9y ago
  I'm not sure that's a negotiation point for Intel, as they own 15 percent of ASML. Might be a rough ride for everybody if the EU had any intention of playing that card.
  - vixen99 9y ago
    But agreement specifically excludes rights on future development by ASML
5eyes5 9y ago
See 5eyes The important EU states certainly have the same back door access or a 'trusted' means of disabling it. Freedom is for the powerful and important, not the pish posh tax slaves these Grace's fatten themselves upon.
nine_k 9y ago
Both Russia and China (afaik) work on completely locally sourced production of CPUs with a design which is completely open for DoD review. This does come at a cost of performance, energy efficiency, high price, etc, but DoD / homeland security offices (or their equivalents) are ready to tolerate it. Same applies to OSes, but mature open-source OSes are several.
akerro 9y ago
> It seems strange to me that the European Union is allowing this. The fact that a foreign company has a backdoor in every computer running in European countries is so concerning on so many levels. Defense ministers from European countries should wake up and outlaw this. Can't find source for this, but a few months ago I read that US (NSA, CIA) and EU (BND) agencies get the same Intel CPU WITHOUT IME, even more NSA made it a requirement for Intel that IME must be completely removed.
- KGIII 9y ago
  You may be thinking of the HAP switch. It's an undocumented setting for the High Assurance Program. http://www.zdnet.com/article/researchers-say-intels-management-engine-feature-can-be-switched-off/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/researchers-say-intels-manageme... I've not tested it, but it looks like you flip a bit and it all goes away. Well, slightly more complicated but that's the gist of it.
hwh 9y ago
The fines you are probably thinking of are mostly antitrust law based. I don't see grounds for making this issue an antitrust case - at least as far as I can see, nobody else says so either. You are also talking about defense politics, i.e. the military sector. That and the secret service sector is not covered at all by EU legislation and EU executive. Also, I don't see why after looking at interests banning Intel from doing so would be advisable. Most relevant EU countries have close cooperation with the US in the military and secret service sectors. That said, defence ministers usually don't outlaw things. It would be the parliaments. And EU law might actually hinder them from doing so, given that it first and foremost focuses on enforcing open competition and free flow of goods.
K0SM0S 9y ago
Disclaimer: I've conducted personal research on politics and gov between 2003-2014; I've been exposed to non-public facts and discussions the likes of WikiLeaks as we have come to know it since; however I do _NOT_ have "insider knowledge" of any kind regarding these issues. I've merely learned to read between the lines, so to speak (read: Snowden speaks in a fairly intelligible language to me, like many others privy to how gov works I'm rarely wrong about my assumptions in the long run; and believe me when I say it's easier than one thinks: we tend to overcomplicate matters as adults, obfuscate ourselves the underlying 'whys'). At best, these are educated guesses from historical and modern facts, which represent my _opinions_ and only mine. Also, by far and large, I do _not_ subscribe to conspiracy theories. More like the opposite: I do advocate that govs run pretty much as they should and near the best of their ability most of the time. The real question is indeed less about intent and more about capability (in a broad sense, including intellectual/philosophical 'enlightenment'). With this out of the way, here's the TL;DR: like most corporations executives, the fundamental goal of most officials in place isn't to conduct their mission/mandate but to further their own power; two motivations which ideally go together but in actual fact seldom do. Only the illusion of the former is actually necessary to achieve the latter. I won't elaborate much because this view amounts to a borderline revolutionary thesis of sorts (calling for a new kind of regime, in place of the disingenuously called "representative democracy"). It's interesting but it's a book, not a comment. Just recall history and ask questions about: - The subtle and yet vast spectrum of 'corruption': where does it begins, how far it goes, even after every involved party has died? - The illusion of safety or 'acceptable' conduct that officials (or execs) can convince themselves of, regarding their organization and themselves: how cognitively biased can human beings be, paradoxically increasingly so as the stakes go higher? - When we could predict with reasonable confidence that things could go very wrong very fast, did we always manage to prevent just that from happening? Did we even try to the best of our then-capabilities? (Don't even go Godwin on that, not even wars, think market crash or viruses). - How often in history do we need, as whole societies, the lessons of examples and dire consequences before we put our act together? What is the limbic value of 'could' versus 'hasn't yet'? Once you realize, as I did some time ago, that we are much less rational beings than anything else, every mind-blowing decision you've witnessed in your own life by people who should have known better becomes not just possible but likely and even understandable, if not outright predictable. My personal contention is that we'll basically need to go through a 'black swan' of sorts to really deeply learn about electronic safety; much like knowing about germs and viruses did not automatically provoked decent health procedures even by health professionals, let alone the public. But now we do wash hands and sanitize rooms. Just consider how hard a lesson it's been to learn for humanity. We are in the infancy of the electronic age; I'm afraid it will get worse before it gets better. I just hope it will take the form of a temporally 'short' catastrophy rather than a whole new medieval age of sorts, "dark ages" as seen from a hypothetical future; but the more I observe human beings today, the less confident I feel about us taking the high road directly. Especially when lives are threatened not clinically but rather socially and psychologically. Our survival instincts tend to be numbed when life/reproduction isn't directly threatened. At this point you may go Orwellian because it's almost less frightening than what's potentially facing some of us on this planet, and our societies appear to be both very resilient yet very susceptible to flaws (probably goes hand in hand). And when there's a flaw... be it legal, psychological, or otherwise... you know someone someday will exploit it. Circumstancial aspects like this ME merely serve as paths to what will eventually become history, but alas it's almost impossible to predict which particular aspect will be the trigger, as impossible as it is to shield ourselves from all angles. But whatever, it too, shall pass. This isn't to say we can't mitigate because we absolutely can and should (I do try personally), but we can't really alter the shape of things to come because it would amount to changing human nature before the fact. Never happened in history. I don't think evolution works like that, period. Sorry for taking the discussion into a rather philosophical light, but that is my best answer to the 'whys' you asked and seem concerned about —concerns that I share but fail to astonish me nowadays.
necessity 9y ago
Backdoors in every computer is governments wet dream not nightmare.

by jknz 9y ago

amelius 9y ago

The EU has one very strong negotiation point: ASML. Without that company, Intel wouldn't even be able to produce their CPUs.

n0ric 9y ago
It should be noted that ASML pretty much has an monopoly on the EUV Lithography market... At least that's what they said at the CYMER (Subsidiary of ASML) tour I went to recently. I'm not exactly sure about the DUV market, so I won't comment on it.
selectodude 9y ago
I'm not sure that's a negotiation point for Intel, as they own 15 percent of ASML. Might be a rough ride for everybody if the EU had any intention of playing that card.
- vixen99 9y ago
  But agreement specifically excludes rights on future development by ASML

5eyes5 9y ago

See 5eyes The important EU states certainly have the same back door access or a 'trusted' means of disabling it. Freedom is for the powerful and important, not the pish posh tax slaves these Grace's fatten themselves upon.

nine_k 9y ago

Both Russia and China (afaik) work on completely locally sourced production of CPUs with a design which is completely open for DoD review. This does come at a cost of performance, energy efficiency, high price, etc, but DoD / homeland security offices (or their equivalents) are ready to tolerate it. Same applies to OSes, but mature open-source OSes are several.

akerro 9y ago

> It seems strange to me that the European Union is allowing this. The fact that a foreign company has a backdoor in every computer running in European countries is so concerning on so many levels. Defense ministers from European countries should wake up and outlaw this. Can't find source for this, but a few months ago I read that US (NSA, CIA) and EU (BND) agencies get the same Intel CPU WITHOUT IME, even more NSA made it a requirement for Intel that IME must be completely removed.

KGIII 9y ago
You may be thinking of the HAP switch. It's an undocumented setting for the High Assurance Program. http://www.zdnet.com/article/researchers-say-intels-management-engine-feature-can-be-switched-off/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/researchers-say-intels-manageme... I've not tested it, but it looks like you flip a bit and it all goes away. Well, slightly more complicated but that's the gist of it.

hwh 9y ago

The fines you are probably thinking of are mostly antitrust law based. I don't see grounds for making this issue an antitrust case - at least as far as I can see, nobody else says so either. You are also talking about defense politics, i.e. the military sector. That and the secret service sector is not covered at all by EU legislation and EU executive. Also, I don't see why after looking at interests banning Intel from doing so would be advisable. Most relevant EU countries have close cooperation with the US in the military and secret service sectors. That said, defence ministers usually don't outlaw things. It would be the parliaments. And EU law might actually hinder them from doing so, given that it first and foremost focuses on enforcing open competition and free flow of goods.

K0SM0S 9y ago

Disclaimer: I've conducted personal research on politics and gov between 2003-2014; I've been exposed to non-public facts and discussions the likes of WikiLeaks as we have come to know it since; however I do _NOT_ have "insider knowledge" of any kind regarding these issues. I've merely learned to read between the lines, so to speak (read: Snowden speaks in a fairly intelligible language to me, like many others privy to how gov works I'm rarely wrong about my assumptions in the long run; and believe me when I say it's easier than one thinks: we tend to overcomplicate matters as adults, obfuscate ourselves the underlying 'whys'). At best, these are educated guesses from historical and modern facts, which represent my _opinions_ and only mine. Also, by far and large, I do _not_ subscribe to conspiracy theories. More like the opposite: I do advocate that govs run pretty much as they should and near the best of their ability most of the time. The real question is indeed less about intent and more about capability (in a broad sense, including intellectual/philosophical 'enlightenment'). With this out of the way, here's the TL;DR: like most corporations executives, the fundamental goal of most officials in place isn't to conduct their mission/mandate but to further their own power; two motivations which ideally go together but in actual fact seldom do. Only the illusion of the former is actually necessary to achieve the latter. I won't elaborate much because this view amounts to a borderline revolutionary thesis of sorts (calling for a new kind of regime, in place of the disingenuously called "representative democracy"). It's interesting but it's a book, not a comment. Just recall history and ask questions about: - The subtle and yet vast spectrum of 'corruption': where does it begins, how far it goes, even after every involved party has died? - The illusion of safety or 'acceptable' conduct that officials (or execs) can convince themselves of, regarding their organization and themselves: how cognitively biased can human beings be, paradoxically increasingly so as the stakes go higher? - When we could predict with reasonable confidence that things could go very wrong very fast, did we always manage to prevent just that from happening? Did we even try to the best of our then-capabilities? (Don't even go Godwin on that, not even wars, think market crash or viruses). - How often in history do we need, as whole societies, the lessons of examples and dire consequences before we put our act together? What is the limbic value of 'could' versus 'hasn't yet'? Once you realize, as I did some time ago, that we are much less rational beings than anything else, every mind-blowing decision you've witnessed in your own life by people who should have known better becomes not just possible but likely and even understandable, if not outright predictable. My personal contention is that we'll basically need to go through a 'black swan' of sorts to really deeply learn about electronic safety; much like knowing about germs and viruses did not automatically provoked decent health procedures even by health professionals, let alone the public. But now we do wash hands and sanitize rooms. Just consider how hard a lesson it's been to learn for humanity. We are in the infancy of the electronic age; I'm afraid it will get worse before it gets better. I just hope it will take the form of a temporally 'short' catastrophy rather than a whole new medieval age of sorts, "dark ages" as seen from a hypothetical future; but the more I observe human beings today, the less confident I feel about us taking the high road directly. Especially when lives are threatened not clinically but rather socially and psychologically. Our survival instincts tend to be numbed when life/reproduction isn't directly threatened. At this point you may go Orwellian because it's almost less frightening than what's potentially facing some of us on this planet, and our societies appear to be both very resilient yet very susceptible to flaws (probably goes hand in hand). And when there's a flaw... be it legal, psychological, or otherwise... you know someone someday will exploit it. Circumstancial aspects like this ME merely serve as paths to what will eventually become history, but alas it's almost impossible to predict which particular aspect will be the trigger, as impossible as it is to shield ourselves from all angles. But whatever, it too, shall pass. This isn't to say we can't mitigate because we absolutely can and should (I do try personally), but we can't really alter the shape of things to come because it would amount to changing human nature before the fact. Never happened in history. I don't think evolution works like that, period. Sorry for taking the discussion into a rather philosophical light, but that is my best answer to the 'whys' you asked and seem concerned about —concerns that I share but fail to astonish me nowadays.

necessity 9y ago

Backdoors in every computer is governments wet dream not nightmare.