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Why Intel will never let owners control the ME
- lioeters 8y agoAt least one company is developing "a solid approach on how to run a freed Intel ME": https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/ https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/
- oneplane 8y agoThat's not anything different from the described HAP bit and removal of unneeded modules. You still have 10% of the ME left and required to boot, on top of the BSP, which is also 'secret'.
- ghthor 8y agoYep, we need new silicon designs, new fabs, and a new corporate structure that isn't as susceptible to this type of corruption.
- IronBacon 8y agoWell, according to the linked post to Phoronix, the POWER9 architecture is not produced for OEM PC market requirements so it doesn't have do oblige Hollywood non-negotiable DRM requirements. Did I understood right? Until now I thought the only option was using pre 2008 Intel (and same era AMD?) CPUs or some Atom models...
- oneplane 8y agoAnd then there is some ARM and RISC-V, those could become viable.
- blackflame7000 8y agoOne technology breakthrough for ARM over x86(which has little room left for improvement at this point), could be a watershed moment for the chip manufacturers
- 0xcde4c3db 8y agoThis stuff doesn't exist because of a particular vendor or ISA; it's a mainstream feature for modern application platforms. Many ARM systems achieve similar ends through a kind of hypervisor / shadow OS that can't readily be disabled by the device owner [1]. [1] https://www.arm.com/products/security-on-arm/trustzone https://www.arm.com/products/security-on-arm/trustzone
- rhn_mk1 8y agoDRM schemes are explicitly listed and talked about as one of the 3 applications of TrustZone in the official docs.
- clhodapp 8y agoUnfortunately, enabling this stuff seems to be the deal with the devil you have to do in order to become a mainstream platform. I highly doubt that ARM will supplant x86 without also offering something that is functionally equivalent to ME.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoWhy? Few care about 4k optical discs on a PC.
- pvg 8y agox86(which has little room left for improvement at this point) That's exactly what IBM, Motorola and Apple said when they got together to promote a new architecture once. In 1992.
- pmontra 8y agoIf disabling ME would only prevent me from watching Ultra-HD Blu-rays, which I don't watch, I'll disable ME immediately if I only could. That won't breach any obvious contractual obligations of Intel/AMD with Hollywood.
- hlandau 8y agoThat's not the issue. You can already disable pretty much all of the ME's functions post-boot with HAP and me_cleaner. But for people who take an interest in fully-open source firmware (coreboot, libreboot), it would be nice to be able to replace the ME firmware with something open source. But this is impossible because the hardware will only run Intel-signed blobs. By "owner control", I mean the freedom to run whatever you like on the ME. It's likely that Intel is not only unwilling, but contractually precluded from letting people do so, for the reasons I gave. Hence the claim that Intel will never let people control what runs on the ME.
- yayana 8y agoUnless they have forgotten the last 2 decades, Intel only has to not let you have access to specific keys that are only available to a securely booted Intel ME. Trying to prevent you from running something else is pointless posturing for that purpose as it is only useful to decoding DRM if you already have some means to compromise Intel MEs and extract key information. Not allowing anyone to build an alternate system with ME's capabilities is not pointless posturing when it comes to getting the NSA to bless your export of higher performance chips than the US wants many states to have. To put it a different way, they want Hollywood to have strong low layer encryption on your computer but they don't want you to have it, especially if you might be outside the US.
- ghthor 8y agoSounds like the real truth, I hope it isn't more neferious then this though.
- close04 8y agoThe reasoning presented by this article is very "conspiracy-style". The arguments revolve around GPUs which are a more natural fit for DRM mechanisms: they display the image, and are more apt at decoding/encoding that protected stream than the CPU. But using ME for DRM in the near future is highly unlikely since it would just be a boon for ARM based systems. With CPUs that can be designed and sold at far lower cost (and performance) by manufacturers that are willing to forego such lunacies as DRM embedded in x86 CPUs and get a foothold in the market. And x86 already feels past its prime given that many usage scenarios already migrated to ARM devices. At some point the CPU, GPU, and a hypothetical VPU might share the same die in a heterogeneous chip, and this might include such DRM protection for the reasons GPUs have them now. But the x86 CPU part having built-in DRM? I'm not buying it without someone making a better case than this article. The ME is just Intel's pi*s-poor attempt at securing the system. But it's mostly security through obscurity so basically almost none at all. The more "conspiracy" version is that it serves specifically as a back door for certain agency type actors. Which is not unlikely. But the more obvious reason is that at this point opening it up is no longer an option. It would mean opening the door widely to an avalanche of exploits capable of hitting systems 12 years back. Something that would make Meltdown/Spectre look tame since there is no OS fix for ME. Also, in Intel's vision letting you control the ME is like giving you the keys to the kingdom. They can't admit to themselves that the ME is not a locked gate, it's a moat. And if you're willing to get dirty you will get through it.
- INTPenis 8y agoSo the author is claiming that the main reason why ME exists is DRM. I can see it being one of the reasons but it is also a pretty good anti-theft system if you look at it naively. And I haven't seen a laptop with a CD tray for at least 7 years. Who is playing these bluray discs in their laptop?
- jchw 8y agoIntel also benefits from ME in many many ways, I'm sure. Like obviously it is a massive value add to their Enterprise customers. However, I think the argument in the article still holds water, not because Blu-ray matters, but because nobody had any idea it wouldn't. CPU and GPU manufacturers probably have extremely long contracts to implement and obscure DRM features, fueled in part by Hollywood's sore feelings from the DVD Jon days. Of course Netflix and Hulu and so forth happened and whoops, laptops got thin and stopped having optical drives and oops, Samsung added streaming services to their TVs... And now Bluray and it's assinine security schemes hardly matter. Hollywood didn't adapt well to this new streaming world so I'll bet they didn't see it coming either. Of course the threats not over. Next generation we'll probably see even more insane copyright protection coming out of Hollywood for the sake of protecting services like Netflix as a contractual obligation if they want to carry the hot new garbage. I'm particularly excited to see what happens with stuff like Intel SGX. This will probably continue for the next couple decades until a set of realizations finally become too apparent to ignore. After all, the pirates torrenting the latest Game of Thrones don't need Intel SGX or HDCP. They just click play. But the more delusional and out of touch the industry is, the longer it takes. Video game DRM may not be a solved problem but even the absolute worst protection available today is so much less hostile than what we were dealing with a decade ago that it hardly matters. Hell, nowadays with PC games, anticheat is the more invasive technology. Modern invasive DRM mostly just phones home to get some crypto keys and to try to limit a single license from being spread to the entire internet. It may seem anticonsumer, but it's the worst there is, and it's very telling that gamers seem more concerned about tracking technology than middleware like Denuvo.
- hlandau 8y agoDon't assume that hardware-level DRM will go away with the death of optical media. As I understand it, the media industry seems to have adopted a standard position that UHD/4K content should require hardware-level DRM. UHD Blu-rays require this sort of thing, but also UHD streams on Netflix; for this reason at least at one point UHD Netflix was restricted to Chromebooks only. Not sure if this is still the case; I'd expect Google's Widevine to get Intel DRM support if it hasn't got it already. You might want to look at Widevine's website; there's a small amount of information on the security levels. Essentially, there seem to be two levels of Widevine; what I'd describe as the placebo level (just obfuscated data processing within the browser, etc.) that might be used for e.g. HD Netflix, and the toxic-waste level which expects hardware-level DRM, which industry appears to be demanding as a minimum standard for UHD content. Consumer demand for UHD Netflix will continue to drive adoption of hardware-level DRM for the time being, it seems.
- badrabbit 8y agoI think there is a huge architectural philosophy divide here. Some think ME has it's place if done right,but surely many would agree with me when saying all of ME's functionality should be implemented by the OS. ring -1 should not exist. Period.
- isostatic 8y agoHow does ME contrast with things like ilo/ipmi?
- amelius 8y agoAs an aside, we recently experienced a server hack through a vulnerability in iLO (a system we didn't even use other than for rebooting the machine) Thanks, HP! /s
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoTo build on this, we distrusted the actual servers in the rack for the following: 1. Out of band devices to administer boot fail incidents, serially controlled 2. PDU (Power distribution Unit). Supplied with 2 different power sources. Provides dual power per server on rack. Controlled by ethernet. 3. Firewall rules that prevent the managed crap (iLO and the like) from working. The only recent issue my previous job had, was in a junior sysad installed apache tomcat with default creds. Can't really fix user error - but the above rules at least stop malicious intent from manufacturers. Mostly.
- badrabbit 8y agoME is like that except it ships with the CPU.
- zvrba 8y ago> many would agree with me when saying all of ME's functionality should be implemented by the OS. ME's use case is to be able to manage the machine when there is no OS installed, is unbootable or unresponsive. So somebody doesn't have to physically visit a datacenter and find the machine in a rack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Techno...
- mixmastamyk 8y agoNot sure I buy the part about DRM and market suicide. Who uses optical discs any longer? I don’t know anyone, though several have old collections from a decade ago gathering dust. Also first I’ve heard that a new blu ray even exists.
- hlandau 8y agoThe use of hardware-level DRM like this appears to be something being pushed with the move to UHD (4K) and higher resolutions, for both discs and streamed content. This seems to be an industry-wide policy that's been adopted; AFAIK, Netflix's UHD streaming is gated on hardware-level DRM being available.
- ghthor 8y agoLame, but whatever, I'll go love in the world of content creators that aren't prescribing to this shit. Probably will save myself from being mindcontroled.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoI would point out that physical discs remain the only way to own media you buy. Even though Blu-rays are DRM'd, the fact that they can't change the encryption on the fly means they're all inevitably broken. I can buy Blu-rays, and know that their DRM's circumventability can't be taken away, unlike the video you stream from the cloud.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoStill have and occasionally purchase CDs for ripping, but never cared to own video that I might watch once every five years. Also the churn in formats makes it a losing prop anyway. Regret my video disc purchases of the last decade or two.
- guitarbill 8y agoYeah, it doesn't make sense, especially for enterprise CPUs. Which server manufacturer/large datacenter operator cares about DRM? And conversely, wouldn't they rather not have another attack vector? So there must be legitimate enterprise use-cases for ME/PSP, or something else is going on.
- ddtaylor 8y agoIt would be nice if this kind of thing could be used to stop cheating in games providing a secure channel of communication between server --> cpu --> gpu, but that likely won't work considering it's not working very well to stop media from being pirated in it's current application.
- J-Kuhn 8y agoYes, this is one application. Google "Software Guard Extensions" and "Intel Enclave" [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions
- ddtaylor 8y agoAny idea if commercial games are using this yet?
- dogma1138 8y agoThere are a few DRMs that offer using it but none of them are in use mostly because of market share issues. SGX isn’t available on the majority of consumer CPUs because it’s a fairly new extension and it’s Intel exclusive. I know of a few enterprise products that use it for their “soft-dongle” licensing if you don’t want to plug in a license dongle in your server, yes it’s 2018 and we still have license dongles like it’s 1988, ESRI I’m looking at you.
- Confiks 8y agoSo the article is portraying 4k blu-ray as the raison d'être for Intel ME on consumer devices, but isn't for example Netflix HD which uses HDCP 2.2 somehow also tied to a trusted execution environment within Intel CPUs, or is this method of protection only via the display and the graphics chip (sometimes also by Intel; on the motherboard)?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- hlandau 8y agoThe ME-based DRM provided by Intel isn't inherently limited to securing UHD Blu-rays, and you can expect Google's Widevine, as used by Netflix, to consume this functionality as well. My understanding is that the industry has decided that UHD/4K content should require hardware-level DRM, no matter whether on disc or streamed, and that Netflix UHD requires a system with this functionality.
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoHow does Apple deal with this?
- bryanbuckley 8y agoProbably wanting to use their own solution (read: CPUs/SoCs, secure enclave) for their computers.
- kev009 8y agoThe one you want https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html Open source and toolchain and access and validation turtles all the way down https://git.raptorcs.com/git/ https://git.raptorcs.com/git/
- mpartel 8y agoFor others that didn't notice this new and somewhat less expensive version come out, here's the HN thread from 2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17124593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17124593
- pdonis 8y ago> somewhat less expensive Only in the sense that the Atlantic Ocean has "somewhat less water" than the Pacific. :-) Over $4K for a "desktop development system". That's not personal computing. That's small scale enterprise computing, which is too small a market to make a dent in Intel and AMD. Their prices need to come down by an order of magnitude to make this technology a significant player.
- kev009 8y agoHuh? It's under $2k for a daily drivable config. $1600 if you are willing to do a 2.1 rev chip without HW speculative execution mitigations and some other errata.
- pdonis 8y ago> It's under $2k for a daily drivable config. Which config are you talking about?
- kev009 8y agoCheck the link in my original post and the child comment. You can buy DDR4-R and NVMe cheaply from places like Superbiiz. Here is the special DD2.1 box https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS1/intro.html https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS1/intro.html for $1600.
- Sniffnoy 8y agoThe question I always have about this is, why has nobody tried to make the case that this is illegal? ESR has suggested that the selling of routers with closed-source firmware ought to be regarded as the tort of conversion; this is a similar but stronger case.
- ghthor 8y agoMaybe because not enough engineers have lawyer friends that understand technology well enough to listen to us complain about all this dumb shit we have to deal with. We all need to make more lawyer friends.
- bumholio 8y agoIt's incredible how much effort and money has gone down this drain, chasing the fundamentally flawed idea of DRM. All to satisfy some inflated management egos and sell snake oil to the content industry - the enginners implementing these schemes must surely realize it's in vain, that the attack surface includes all devices in the world and all it takes is a single successful hack against a single device to decrypt the content after which it's game over. And the consumer is paying for all of this security theater.
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoIt seems as though it has been working for them though, no? Isn’t Netflix and its DRM evidence of that?
- wpietri 8y agoTo me, Netflix is evidence that there's no point to DRM. I still can torrent any content I want, but I almost never do. But if it's on Netflix or anything else I subscribe to, I won't bother. I suspect Netflix's DRM is purely about pacifying video industry executives, and that it makes approximately no difference to the bottom line of anybody except the people hyping their proprietary DRM solutions.
- wolfgke 8y ago> To me, Netflix is evidence that there's no point to DRM. I still can torrent any content I want, but I almost never do. To me, it is rather the other way round: As Netflix offers no DRM-free version, I will never subscribe. So in other words: by insisting on DRM, the movie industry openly states that they don't want any money from people who don't want DRM. But if you "reverse" this sentence "in a hacker way", this means that they are not losing any money, if DRM-haters pirate (because they just stated that they don't want the DRM-haters' money). Thus, in my opinion is quite a pro-pirating slogan coming from the mouth of Hollywood.
- CJefferson 8y ago
- makecheck 8y agoSo, the definition of a feature only required for a single application (playback), and unwanted by consumers at that. This clearly did not belong in any general-purpose processor (if it should have been built at all). You know, if movie and recording studios want this so badly, let them put up the billions it should require for them to produce their own coprocessor.
- nickpsecurity 8y agoHere's a supporting link from Intel's blog in 2011 that they are DRMing for Hollywood: https://blogs.intel.com/technology/2011/01/intel_insider_-_what_is_it_no/ https://blogs.intel.com/technology/2011/01/intel_insider_-_w...
- qubex 8y agoThis is a large part of why I find myself continually eyeing those TALOS OpenPower9 systems.
- Animats 8y agoThere should be a market for business desktops which don't have the ME, and don't have the keys for decrypting paid video content. You don't need your employees watching movies on their work machine, and the security is better.
- alexandernst 8y ago"They won't let you disable ME because of Hollywood". I don't know, Rick... I'll call this argument bullshit. I'm pretty sure there is a very good (evil) reason Intel won't let us disable ME, but it's not "Hollywood".
- godgod 8y agoME was designed not for us to control our computers but for the INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES to control our computers.
- franga2000 8y agoThe thing we need now is a version of the GDPR for hardware and software. A law that says that non-essential features mustn't be inseparably bundled with essential system features so the user can disable them without killing the system. Just like the GDPR did for essential data and marketing data. Is this so far-fetched?
- tonysdg 8y agoIt'd be damn tricky to implement, probably impossibly so. I can think of a few reasons: - Modern lithography just isn't that precise to my understanding. The whole point of binning chips is that you aim for an entire wafer of Core i9s, but you accept that some flaws will occur and will require disabling features of the chip. Are the disabled features "non-essential"? Certainly seems like they are if they can be disabled. - From a marketing perspective, you'd need to help customers decipher dozens of different models of the same chip. For n features, you'd need (2^n)-1 chips, right? So Model A would support everything; Model B would support everything except virtualization; Model C eould support everything except HDCP; and so on. - And as a customer, does that mean I need to spend $500 and replace my CPU everytime I realize I need a new feature? How would that work for laptops, where chips are frequently soldered to the motherboard? I'm sympathetic to the idea of requiring transparency in general, but unfortunately hardware is a helluva lot trickier than software.
- kilburn 8y agoYou can disable most of that stuff from the bios/efi, so you already can effectively opt out of those features. This would be enough for a harware-gdpr thingy I think...
- tonysdg 8y agoThat's true -- I guess I hadn't been thinking of it from that perspective. There'd still be the problem of asking consumers to "opt out/in" of these features, of course. It's hard enough asking consumers to make informed decisions when it comes to "can we use your photos/track you online" -- now you'd be asking "do you want to run virtual machines/access encrypted content/etc.". But I guess I'd appreciate the ability to turn more stuff on/off in the BIOS -- makes me think of the whole "dark silicon" notion (if I don't use my laptop for Netflix, can I disable the streaming encryption stuff to save battery life?).
- husamia 8y agothere has to be a perception among the consumers that they are purchasing valuable content. the DRM makes this perception real. No DRM means no profit