5 ms·

I think it's absolutely unreasonable to imply that this was intentional. Besides the massive amount of complexity these systems have, there are plenty of "legit

I think it's absolutely unreasonable to imply that this was intentional. Besides the massive amount of complexity these systems have, there are plenty of "legitimate" places to hide backdoors, instead of in a performance architecture decision. Keep in mind that whatever "evil agencies" would have asked for this would most likely find themselves vulnerable, and nobody would sign off on. I do agree, however, the "security by obscurity approach is quite frankly crap". The fact that even large corporations (not the big 5) can't even get away from ME speaks volumes about why this is a bad idea. Facebook isn't the only company with important data.

mehrdadn 9y ago
> I think it's absolutely unreasonable to imply that this was intentional. Amen. It blows my mind that some people think clever techniques like speculative or out-of-order execution must've somehow how nefarious intentions behind them. Come on HN...
galvin 9y ago
Adding a backdoor seems unreasonable but they may have chosen performance over security. Even if this individual bug wasn't intentional they are responsible for setting their priorities.
- Filligree 9y ago
  There are CPUs available which choose security over performance. They aren't made by Intel, but you can buy them, and they're even cheaper. Oh, you don't want to do that?
alphonsegaston 9y ago
Well, I read somewhere the other day that this form of error/attack was conceived of in the academic literature back in 1992. I won’t believe it’s intentional without evidence in that direction, but this is conceivably the kind of obscure/complex attack you’d expect of a state actor.
- throwawayfinal 9y ago
  This has been a known issue in xbox 360 hardware since about 2010. It just keeps popping up, someone finally thought to weaponize it.
  - oblio 9y ago
    >It just keeps popping up, someone finally thought to weaponize it. Someone published its weaponization, you mean :)
Animats 9y ago
The Intel Management Engine is a backdoor. Speed variations in speculative execution are an inherent property of the technology. Until recently, few people thought this was exploitable, and it took a lot of work to figure out how to exploit this.
- andrewflnr 9y ago
  You do realize those are ideal properties for a backdoor, don't you? If you were writing the spec for a dream backdoor, you would write that down. The only way you could improve it would be "everyone thinks it's impossible, and they never figure it out."
  - Animats 9y ago
    Yes, though it's moderately hard to exploit against a specific target. It's more useful for bulk attacks - getting everyone who visits a specific web site to run a DDOS attack, or ransomware.
  - jijji 9y ago
    the ideal properties of a backdoor were visualized to me the day i hacked into an author of a largely distributed piece of smtp mail server, only to find sitting in his home directory an unpublished integer overflow exploit written by him years earlier for a version of the software that is currently in wide distribution...
    - dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
      That's close to perfect, indeed. The drawbacks in this scenario are that (1) not everybody runs an SMTP server, (2) if it's open source (and if it's very popular, then it is), some other smart people will look for the bug and publish it for fame. That's quite different from a backdoor built into a processor (although I really doubt Intel was really involved in any shady practices, it looks like they were not smart enough).
      - paulie_a 9y ago

mehrdadn 9y ago

> I think it's absolutely unreasonable to imply that this was intentional. Amen. It blows my mind that some people think clever techniques like speculative or out-of-order execution must've somehow how nefarious intentions behind them. Come on HN...

galvin 9y ago

Adding a backdoor seems unreasonable but they may have chosen performance over security. Even if this individual bug wasn't intentional they are responsible for setting their priorities.

Filligree 9y ago
There are CPUs available which choose security over performance. They aren't made by Intel, but you can buy them, and they're even cheaper. Oh, you don't want to do that?

alphonsegaston 9y ago

Well, I read somewhere the other day that this form of error/attack was conceived of in the academic literature back in 1992. I won’t believe it’s intentional without evidence in that direction, but this is conceivably the kind of obscure/complex attack you’d expect of a state actor.

throwawayfinal 9y ago
This has been a known issue in xbox 360 hardware since about 2010. It just keeps popping up, someone finally thought to weaponize it.
- oblio 9y ago
  >It just keeps popping up, someone finally thought to weaponize it. Someone published its weaponization, you mean :)

Animats 9y ago

The Intel Management Engine is a backdoor. Speed variations in speculative execution are an inherent property of the technology. Until recently, few people thought this was exploitable, and it took a lot of work to figure out how to exploit this.

andrewflnr 9y ago
You do realize those are ideal properties for a backdoor, don't you? If you were writing the spec for a dream backdoor, you would write that down. The only way you could improve it would be "everyone thinks it's impossible, and they never figure it out."
- Animats 9y ago
  Yes, though it's moderately hard to exploit against a specific target. It's more useful for bulk attacks - getting everyone who visits a specific web site to run a DDOS attack, or ransomware.
- jijji 9y ago
  the ideal properties of a backdoor were visualized to me the day i hacked into an author of a largely distributed piece of smtp mail server, only to find sitting in his home directory an unpublished integer overflow exploit written by him years earlier for a version of the software that is currently in wide distribution...
  - dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
    That's close to perfect, indeed. The drawbacks in this scenario are that (1) not everybody runs an SMTP server, (2) if it's open source (and if it's very popular, then it is), some other smart people will look for the bug and publish it for fame. That's quite different from a backdoor built into a processor (although I really doubt Intel was really involved in any shady practices, it looks like they were not smart enough).
    - paulie_a 9y ago