11 ms·

Intel ME Manufacturing Mode: obscured dangers and MacBook vulnerability

342 points by tomxor 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y ago
Does ME Manufacturing mode allow the user to change all the configuration? Does it mean that hackers who incidentally purchased such a machine (but probably not Apple's) with ME Manufacturing mode enabled, can theoretically port coreboot to the machine, then flash their own public key fingerprints into ME, using Boot Guard to protect firmware signed by themselves instead of OEM's? I remember several bunches of Lenovo laptop series released a few years ago seems to have the same vulnerability, and porting coreboot to those computers with earlier chipsets is a real possibility, only prevented by Boot Guard signature. But finding these unpatched and vulnerable series of machines is a hit-or-miss game with minimum chance of success. If someone really implements tools to do all these things, is it possible that the secondhand vulnerable motherboards would be the gold in the hacker communities and be sold at a high price? Another fact is that ME is a part of the PCH, which is located on the CPU package. If a hacker has access to a BGA rework technician in a professional repair workshop, it should be possible to desolder the original CPU from the board, and install a new one with unconfigurated ME to "own" the machine.
- markovbot 8y ago
  Gee, that almost sounds like a good thing.
- turblety 8y ago
  Exactly. Remember Intel ME is a great utility and has some awesome abilities. The issue that people have is not the fact there is a CPU running another CPU that looks after the main one. It's that it's closed source and has remote control capabilities that can not be controlled by the user. If Intel would just allow an owner to build and flash their own Intel ME version using their own private/public keys then no one would have an issue with that. It's the fact it's a secret closed system that has full control to monitor everything you do, and can not be fully disabled.
  - MisterTea 8y ago
    > It's the fact it's a secret closed system that has full control to monitor everything you do, and can not be fully disabled. To add to that, it also makes code audits impossible. Intel, AMD, ARM, et al: There is zero, and I mean ZERO reason to hide management functionality from users in this day and age. It's 2018, security through obscurity has been proven wrong time and time again. It's foolish to think otherwise. Edit: grammar.
    - def_ConGame 8y ago
      So it's a back door. And a hamfisted one at that. It's not a coding error. It's built to do exactly what it looks like it's supposed to do: diminish any ordinary person's claim of total control over the behavior of the system, such that, should the need arise, a trained hand can lift the proper latch and intervene, to gain the upper hand, ostensibly so "the good guys" win. The good guys being those that ordered Intel into compliance with such requirements.
      - omegaworks 8y ago
        >The good guys being those that ordered Intel into compliance with such requirements. There is vast case law surrounding our first amendment right to refuse this kind of coercion. No one can force you to present something as yours against your will (at least, if they want it to hold up in court). What is more likely is that Intel won a great many more government contracts by doing this. They'd make tons of money doing it, so they did it. And if they didn't do it, their competitor would. That's how the system works in this country. We shouldn't excuse them so readily.
        diggerNick6771 8y ago
        That's one option. Another is they got a national "security" letter that said you will do this, and even talking about this letter will get you a few years in the clink. I don't think the gov goes around doing this willy nilly, but I think it's clear that this is about the only reliable way to defeat block ciphers. And since there are only 2 real CPU manufacturers, it's easier to do this than attack crypto directly. My personal pet theory is that the aes keys are kept on the die for later retrieval. That and/or keystrokes.
- Reelin 8y ago
  It sure would be nice if we could just purchase such unlocked devices directly. You used to actually control the devices you purchased. Then mobile comes along and so far we've seen locked OS accounts (rooting), locked bootloaders, and locked basebands. Now there's locked ME or PSP. This is getting ridiculous, as well as difficult to keep track of. Perhaps we need some sort of "Fully Unlocked" certification to indicate that a device you're considering purchasing would actually be yours?
  - kazagistar 8y ago
    That would only be a useful certification if anything was certified with it.
    - KAMSPioneer 8y ago
      I can't tell if you and GP are being tongue-in-cheek about FSF's RYF certification or not. Either way, you got a sad laugh from me.
      - Reelin 8y ago
        A very depressed sort of tongue-in-cheek, but I sometimes forget that there's no tone of voice on the internet.
  - drb91 8y ago
    > Perhaps we need some sort of "Fully Unlocked" certification to indicate that a device you're considering purchasing would actually be yours? Maybe we should make it impossible to advertise a product as being purchasable if you also aren't purchasing rights to the software (and the ability to modify it). Just remove ownership from the equation entirely unless they can demonstrate that the user has full control of the hardware.
    - gmueckl 8y ago
      That would be a pyrrhic victory at best. True ownership of comsumer devices is de facto a thing of the distant past. If you degraded sales to rentals by law, manufacturers would immediately try to jump onto that train and come up with ways to extract even more momey from customers. How would you feel for having to pay your CPU manufacturer for the actual CPU time spent on your personal desktop computer at home? Of course, each core counts separately. Can't have you pay less for running properly paralellized programs, now can we?
- userbinator 8y ago
  In other words, this vulnerability is "the insecurity that gives us freedom"? That's what it looks like from a quick scan through the article, and if that's the case this is yet another sad instance where the authoritarian "security" community is openly hostile against user freedom. On that moral point, a relevant comment I made on an article recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102434 Anyone who is actively finding and closing local-only "exploits" for ME, ones which require root access in the first place, is being actively user-hostile.
  - jarfil 8y ago
    "Freedom or persistent compromise" depending on whether it's the rightful owner or an attacker using the exploit. The most user-hostile part is forcing users to choose between accepting an OEM locked down platform, or running an open platform that an attacker can permanently lock down.
    - Reelin 8y ago
      I'd happily pick the third option of running a platform locked down by me, the hardware purchaser, if it were ever made available to the general market. I have absolutely no objection to locked down hardware or DRM-like protections so long as the devices and software I'm using and installing obey me and only me.
      - codedokode 8y ago
        I think DRM means that you cannot control the platform completely.
        Reelin 8y ago
        Agreed, but I wasn't sure how to describe software that attempts to tightly restrict user actions, protect content streams, etc other than as DRM-like. Perhaps just "secure"? Someone controls the platform, and others (users, guests, adversaries, whoever) don't - I just want to be that someone if it's my device.
- oneplane 8y ago
  You can only flash coreboot if the BootGuard isn't blown. Nothing else will allow you to run coreboot on a mobile Intel platform because the CPU has a hard-fused hash of the public key for the IBB (boot code in the CPU ROM/factory microcode) and via that, the ACM. (Authenticated Code Module, loaded via ME) This means that you cannot run an Intel CPU without getting an ACM signed by Intel. And that ACM only works with the ME and an Intel formatted SPI flash partitioning scheme. Keep in mind that this hard lockdown only applies to those SoC-ish chips like the mobile PCH+CPU combo chips. Once the PCH and CPU are separate, it's a different story with real options, all the way down to replacing the PCH with one that doesn't have the fuses for BootGuard blown. Manufacturing mode does allow you to access all of the SPI, but it doesn't allow you to add malware of change the firmware as long as BootGuard is still on since you need the RSA private key from the manufacturer to change the firmware, or the RSA private key from Intel to change the IBB+ACM combo package. The Lenovo series you are referring to had a similar but different issue; BootGuard was in validate-only mode, so you can edit the SPI flash and remove the UEFI part, but leave in everything else (ME, GbE, config, IFF, partition data etc.) This has been a non-default configuration for a while, and as you noted, even then it was hard to find one that had that specific firmware/fuse combination. The ME on platforms with sockets is in the PCH which is on the mainboard, not on the CPU, so in theory it is possible to man-in-the-middle the CPU-PCH communication. Another note: a lot of Intel boards have the CCA debug options for ME still enabled due to a mishap from Intel; CCA is the Closed Chassis Adapter which basically runs JTAG over USB3 directly onto the ME CPU core. Getting a USB 3 cable and removing some pins turns it in to a poor man's CCA cable, running some FOSS software on the host will then enable to you stop the ME core on the target and modify memory at will. This basially enables a tethered ME jailbreak, but also ME malware persistence.
  - userbinator 8y ago
    ...only until someone finds a bypass for BootGuard, which might actually exist. I'm not too optimistic, but I hope so --- and seeing the reactions of different groups when/if it happens will be interesting to say the least.
    - 294de3557d9d00b 8y ago
- Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
  >But finding these unpatched and vulnerable series of machines is a hit-or-miss game with minimum chance of success Bios update version changes or the name itself mentions 'intel ME' in the manufacturer's site for their products[1] it should be fairly simple to find computers with an older bios version. [1] : https://www.acer.com/ac/en/IN/content/support-product/6752?b=1 https://www.acer.com/ac/en/IN/content/support-product/6752?b...
debt 8y ago
"The weakness of "security through obscurity" is so well known as to be obvious. Yet major hardware manufacturers, citing the need to protect intellectual property, often require a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before allowing access to technical documentation. " I believe the actual reason for "security through obscurity" is that it's a delay tactic used against well-funded adversaries. There's an inherent problem in security. A company, existing in the private sector, could never hope to overcome the infinite resources of a nation state. It's literally, mathematically, financially impossible. A nation state could even apply a rule like, if they know a particular technology was developed by roughly 500 engineers at some company, a nation state could employ 5x the number of engineers used; simply as a rule. So in this case, they could employ 2500 security researchers to overcome some security problem.
- superherointj 8y ago
  And still fail. The state is dysfunctional in many regards.
  - moftz 8y ago
    NSA can't hire the hackers they want because they all smoke weed. China sends all their drug users to the execution van so all the new CS and security grads can go right to work for the govt.
    - JimmyAustin 8y ago
      :%s/can't/won't/g
    - walterbell 8y ago
      What about countries where drugs have been decriminalized?
      - ct520 8y ago
        They don’t care
oneplane 8y ago
This is bad in a DoS-type of way. BootGuard only loads correctly signed firmware, the root of trust is an Intel RSA keypair and the hash of the pubkey is burned into the CPU during Intel's manufacturing. The PCH (on the same chip in mobile cases) has the ME which also has fuses, and as long as the CPU only accepts signed code form the ME, and the ME has BootGuard fuse blown, the only thing you can really do is disable a system by nuking the SPI (or just flipping one random bit to invalidate the signature). To fix it, you'd have to re-flash the SPI chip. As far as I know, manufacturing mode only allows you to add signing keys if those keys are signed by Intel, so adding your own keys won't help. Adding a key from another manufacturer with known exploitable firmware could work, but loading that firmware on incompatible hardware won't let you boot the machine so you still get nothing. All in all; nice find, yes you can disable machines via software, but other than that, not as interesting as I had hoped it to be. (IBB or ACM exploits would be very very very sweet)
- jarfil 8y ago
  It also means that instead of having to compromise Intel's signing key to gain full control, now it's also possible to use any compromised key that's been signed by Intel, which may not be as well guarded as Intel's one.
  - oneplane 8y ago
    Yes, well, it was always possible (either using direct flashing or HDA_SDO), or by forcing a reboot with the upgrade bit set (which was enabled by default on most platforms I've seen up to 2017. (no real data after that since I no longer have to deal with fleets of random systems). I suppose the ME MFG mode here adds for an additional path that can be abused silently, which is a real problem. On the key side of things: I have not yet found a leaked key. That would have made coreboot life so much easier...
walterbell 8y ago
A couple of small vendors are trying to offer choices with open firmware. They don't yet have the scale for low cost pricing. 1) Purism has been discussed on HN, trying to extend their laptop coreboot success to a phone form factor, http://puri.sm http://puri.sm 2) Librebox is a desktop computer with coreboot, from Portugal, https://libretrend.com https://libretrend.com and https://youtube.com/watch?&v=mHyJCSqWhFw https://youtube.com/watch?&v=mHyJCSqWhFw For data centers, OpenCompute server owners are also the "OEM" and in control of more keys.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mpartel 8y ago
  Also https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/ https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/. Pricy, but no longer impossibly so.
- hlandau 8y ago
  Purism is a sham. They are openly trying to abuse the RYF process to get a phone with proprietary firmware blobs certified as "RYF", defeating the entire point of the RYF programme: https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-solving-the-first-fsf-ryf-hurdle/ https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-solving-the-first-fsf-ryf-hurd... They also have a history of selling x86 systems while articulating vague hopes that the blob/owner control situation will improve in the future, despite this being clearly implausible. In one case for example, they claimed they might get Intel to sign a custom ME firmware for them in the future. Anyone who knows anything about the ME knows that Intel would never do this, ever.
  - pbasista 8y ago
    I am not sure if seeking a “secondary processor” exclusion qualifies as "abuse". I agree that their products are not as "pure" as advocated by some enthusiasts. But the company itself openly says so and for me that is important. What I do not like is their absolutely ridiculous pricing of additional equipment. For instance, they ask $499 for a 500GB NVMe storage [1], while it can easily be purchased for less than third the price [2]. When I complained about it, their response was: "we are well aware of the problem and will be addressing it within the next few months". That was 4 months ago. [1] https://puri.sm/shop/librem-13/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-13/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-500GB-MZ-V7E500BW/dp/B07BN4NJ2J https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-500GB-MZ-V7E500BW/dp/...
cmurf 8y ago
Is there a way to enroll your own platform key on the latest UEFI Secure Boot enabled Macs? They do not include the 'Microsoft Corporation UEFI CA' therefore a bootloader signed by Microsoft's UEFI binary signing service (which most popular Linux distros do) cannot be verified. And that means you must disable Secure Boot to boot something other than macOS or Windows. And that means you don't really control, therefore don't really own, your hardware.

342 points by tomxor 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Does ME Manufacturing mode allow the user to change all the configuration? Does it mean that hackers who incidentally purchased such a machine (but probably not Apple's) with ME Manufacturing mode enabled, can theoretically port coreboot to the machine, then flash their own public key fingerprints into ME, using Boot Guard to protect firmware signed by themselves instead of OEM's? I remember several bunches of Lenovo laptop series released a few years ago seems to have the same vulnerability, and porting coreboot to those computers with earlier chipsets is a real possibility, only prevented by Boot Guard signature. But finding these unpatched and vulnerable series of machines is a hit-or-miss game with minimum chance of success. If someone really implements tools to do all these things, is it possible that the secondhand vulnerable motherboards would be the gold in the hacker communities and be sold at a high price? Another fact is that ME is a part of the PCH, which is located on the CPU package. If a hacker has access to a BGA rework technician in a professional repair workshop, it should be possible to desolder the original CPU from the board, and install a new one with unconfigurated ME to "own" the machine.

markovbot 8y ago
Gee, that almost sounds like a good thing.
turblety 8y ago
Exactly. Remember Intel ME is a great utility and has some awesome abilities. The issue that people have is not the fact there is a CPU running another CPU that looks after the main one. It's that it's closed source and has remote control capabilities that can not be controlled by the user. If Intel would just allow an owner to build and flash their own Intel ME version using their own private/public keys then no one would have an issue with that. It's the fact it's a secret closed system that has full control to monitor everything you do, and can not be fully disabled.
- MisterTea 8y ago
  > It's the fact it's a secret closed system that has full control to monitor everything you do, and can not be fully disabled. To add to that, it also makes code audits impossible. Intel, AMD, ARM, et al: There is zero, and I mean ZERO reason to hide management functionality from users in this day and age. It's 2018, security through obscurity has been proven wrong time and time again. It's foolish to think otherwise. Edit: grammar.
  - def_ConGame 8y ago
    So it's a back door. And a hamfisted one at that. It's not a coding error. It's built to do exactly what it looks like it's supposed to do: diminish any ordinary person's claim of total control over the behavior of the system, such that, should the need arise, a trained hand can lift the proper latch and intervene, to gain the upper hand, ostensibly so "the good guys" win. The good guys being those that ordered Intel into compliance with such requirements.
    - omegaworks 8y ago
      >The good guys being those that ordered Intel into compliance with such requirements. There is vast case law surrounding our first amendment right to refuse this kind of coercion. No one can force you to present something as yours against your will (at least, if they want it to hold up in court). What is more likely is that Intel won a great many more government contracts by doing this. They'd make tons of money doing it, so they did it. And if they didn't do it, their competitor would. That's how the system works in this country. We shouldn't excuse them so readily.
      - diggerNick6771 8y ago
        That's one option. Another is they got a national "security" letter that said you will do this, and even talking about this letter will get you a few years in the clink. I don't think the gov goes around doing this willy nilly, but I think it's clear that this is about the only reliable way to defeat block ciphers. And since there are only 2 real CPU manufacturers, it's easier to do this than attack crypto directly. My personal pet theory is that the aes keys are kept on the die for later retrieval. That and/or keystrokes.
Reelin 8y ago
It sure would be nice if we could just purchase such unlocked devices directly. You used to actually control the devices you purchased. Then mobile comes along and so far we've seen locked OS accounts (rooting), locked bootloaders, and locked basebands. Now there's locked ME or PSP. This is getting ridiculous, as well as difficult to keep track of. Perhaps we need some sort of "Fully Unlocked" certification to indicate that a device you're considering purchasing would actually be yours?
- kazagistar 8y ago
  That would only be a useful certification if anything was certified with it.
  - KAMSPioneer 8y ago
    I can't tell if you and GP are being tongue-in-cheek about FSF's RYF certification or not. Either way, you got a sad laugh from me.
    - Reelin 8y ago
      A very depressed sort of tongue-in-cheek, but I sometimes forget that there's no tone of voice on the internet.
- drb91 8y ago
  > Perhaps we need some sort of "Fully Unlocked" certification to indicate that a device you're considering purchasing would actually be yours? Maybe we should make it impossible to advertise a product as being purchasable if you also aren't purchasing rights to the software (and the ability to modify it). Just remove ownership from the equation entirely unless they can demonstrate that the user has full control of the hardware.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    That would be a pyrrhic victory at best. True ownership of comsumer devices is de facto a thing of the distant past. If you degraded sales to rentals by law, manufacturers would immediately try to jump onto that train and come up with ways to extract even more momey from customers. How would you feel for having to pay your CPU manufacturer for the actual CPU time spent on your personal desktop computer at home? Of course, each core counts separately. Can't have you pay less for running properly paralellized programs, now can we?
userbinator 8y ago
In other words, this vulnerability is "the insecurity that gives us freedom"? That's what it looks like from a quick scan through the article, and if that's the case this is yet another sad instance where the authoritarian "security" community is openly hostile against user freedom. On that moral point, a relevant comment I made on an article recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102434 Anyone who is actively finding and closing local-only "exploits" for ME, ones which require root access in the first place, is being actively user-hostile.
- jarfil 8y ago
  "Freedom or persistent compromise" depending on whether it's the rightful owner or an attacker using the exploit. The most user-hostile part is forcing users to choose between accepting an OEM locked down platform, or running an open platform that an attacker can permanently lock down.
  - Reelin 8y ago
    I'd happily pick the third option of running a platform locked down by me, the hardware purchaser, if it were ever made available to the general market. I have absolutely no objection to locked down hardware or DRM-like protections so long as the devices and software I'm using and installing obey me and only me.
    - codedokode 8y ago
      I think DRM means that you cannot control the platform completely.
      - Reelin 8y ago
        Agreed, but I wasn't sure how to describe software that attempts to tightly restrict user actions, protect content streams, etc other than as DRM-like. Perhaps just "secure"? Someone controls the platform, and others (users, guests, adversaries, whoever) don't - I just want to be that someone if it's my device.
oneplane 8y ago
You can only flash coreboot if the BootGuard isn't blown. Nothing else will allow you to run coreboot on a mobile Intel platform because the CPU has a hard-fused hash of the public key for the IBB (boot code in the CPU ROM/factory microcode) and via that, the ACM. (Authenticated Code Module, loaded via ME) This means that you cannot run an Intel CPU without getting an ACM signed by Intel. And that ACM only works with the ME and an Intel formatted SPI flash partitioning scheme. Keep in mind that this hard lockdown only applies to those SoC-ish chips like the mobile PCH+CPU combo chips. Once the PCH and CPU are separate, it's a different story with real options, all the way down to replacing the PCH with one that doesn't have the fuses for BootGuard blown. Manufacturing mode does allow you to access all of the SPI, but it doesn't allow you to add malware of change the firmware as long as BootGuard is still on since you need the RSA private key from the manufacturer to change the firmware, or the RSA private key from Intel to change the IBB+ACM combo package. The Lenovo series you are referring to had a similar but different issue; BootGuard was in validate-only mode, so you can edit the SPI flash and remove the UEFI part, but leave in everything else (ME, GbE, config, IFF, partition data etc.) This has been a non-default configuration for a while, and as you noted, even then it was hard to find one that had that specific firmware/fuse combination. The ME on platforms with sockets is in the PCH which is on the mainboard, not on the CPU, so in theory it is possible to man-in-the-middle the CPU-PCH communication. Another note: a lot of Intel boards have the CCA debug options for ME still enabled due to a mishap from Intel; CCA is the Closed Chassis Adapter which basically runs JTAG over USB3 directly onto the ME CPU core. Getting a USB 3 cable and removing some pins turns it in to a poor man's CCA cable, running some FOSS software on the host will then enable to you stop the ME core on the target and modify memory at will. This basially enables a tethered ME jailbreak, but also ME malware persistence.
- userbinator 8y ago
  ...only until someone finds a bypass for BootGuard, which might actually exist. I'm not too optimistic, but I hope so --- and seeing the reactions of different groups when/if it happens will be interesting to say the least.
  - 294de3557d9d00b 8y ago
Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
>But finding these unpatched and vulnerable series of machines is a hit-or-miss game with minimum chance of success Bios update version changes or the name itself mentions 'intel ME' in the manufacturer's site for their products[1] it should be fairly simple to find computers with an older bios version. [1] : https://www.acer.com/ac/en/IN/content/support-product/6752?b=1 https://www.acer.com/ac/en/IN/content/support-product/6752?b...

debt 8y ago

"The weakness of "security through obscurity" is so well known as to be obvious. Yet major hardware manufacturers, citing the need to protect intellectual property, often require a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before allowing access to technical documentation. " I believe the actual reason for "security through obscurity" is that it's a delay tactic used against well-funded adversaries. There's an inherent problem in security. A company, existing in the private sector, could never hope to overcome the infinite resources of a nation state. It's literally, mathematically, financially impossible. A nation state could even apply a rule like, if they know a particular technology was developed by roughly 500 engineers at some company, a nation state could employ 5x the number of engineers used; simply as a rule. So in this case, they could employ 2500 security researchers to overcome some security problem.

superherointj 8y ago
And still fail. The state is dysfunctional in many regards.
- moftz 8y ago
  NSA can't hire the hackers they want because they all smoke weed. China sends all their drug users to the execution van so all the new CS and security grads can go right to work for the govt.
  - JimmyAustin 8y ago
    :%s/can't/won't/g
  - walterbell 8y ago
    What about countries where drugs have been decriminalized?
    - ct520 8y ago
      They don’t care

oneplane 8y ago

This is bad in a DoS-type of way. BootGuard only loads correctly signed firmware, the root of trust is an Intel RSA keypair and the hash of the pubkey is burned into the CPU during Intel's manufacturing. The PCH (on the same chip in mobile cases) has the ME which also has fuses, and as long as the CPU only accepts signed code form the ME, and the ME has BootGuard fuse blown, the only thing you can really do is disable a system by nuking the SPI (or just flipping one random bit to invalidate the signature). To fix it, you'd have to re-flash the SPI chip. As far as I know, manufacturing mode only allows you to add signing keys if those keys are signed by Intel, so adding your own keys won't help. Adding a key from another manufacturer with known exploitable firmware could work, but loading that firmware on incompatible hardware won't let you boot the machine so you still get nothing. All in all; nice find, yes you can disable machines via software, but other than that, not as interesting as I had hoped it to be. (IBB or ACM exploits would be very very very sweet)

jarfil 8y ago
It also means that instead of having to compromise Intel's signing key to gain full control, now it's also possible to use any compromised key that's been signed by Intel, which may not be as well guarded as Intel's one.
- oneplane 8y ago
  Yes, well, it was always possible (either using direct flashing or HDA_SDO), or by forcing a reboot with the upgrade bit set (which was enabled by default on most platforms I've seen up to 2017. (no real data after that since I no longer have to deal with fleets of random systems). I suppose the ME MFG mode here adds for an additional path that can be abused silently, which is a real problem. On the key side of things: I have not yet found a leaked key. That would have made coreboot life so much easier...

walterbell 8y ago

A couple of small vendors are trying to offer choices with open firmware. They don't yet have the scale for low cost pricing. 1) Purism has been discussed on HN, trying to extend their laptop coreboot success to a phone form factor, http://puri.sm http://puri.sm 2) Librebox is a desktop computer with coreboot, from Portugal, https://libretrend.com https://libretrend.com and https://youtube.com/watch?&v=mHyJCSqWhFw https://youtube.com/watch?&v=mHyJCSqWhFw For data centers, OpenCompute server owners are also the "OEM" and in control of more keys.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mpartel 8y ago
Also https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/ https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/. Pricy, but no longer impossibly so.
hlandau 8y ago
Purism is a sham. They are openly trying to abuse the RYF process to get a phone with proprietary firmware blobs certified as "RYF", defeating the entire point of the RYF programme: https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-solving-the-first-fsf-ryf-hurdle/ https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-solving-the-first-fsf-ryf-hurd... They also have a history of selling x86 systems while articulating vague hopes that the blob/owner control situation will improve in the future, despite this being clearly implausible. In one case for example, they claimed they might get Intel to sign a custom ME firmware for them in the future. Anyone who knows anything about the ME knows that Intel would never do this, ever.
- pbasista 8y ago
  I am not sure if seeking a “secondary processor” exclusion qualifies as "abuse". I agree that their products are not as "pure" as advocated by some enthusiasts. But the company itself openly says so and for me that is important. What I do not like is their absolutely ridiculous pricing of additional equipment. For instance, they ask $499 for a 500GB NVMe storage [1], while it can easily be purchased for less than third the price [2]. When I complained about it, their response was: "we are well aware of the problem and will be addressing it within the next few months". That was 4 months ago. [1] https://puri.sm/shop/librem-13/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-13/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-500GB-MZ-V7E500BW/dp/B07BN4NJ2J https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-500GB-MZ-V7E500BW/dp/...

cmurf 8y ago

Is there a way to enroll your own platform key on the latest UEFI Secure Boot enabled Macs? They do not include the 'Microsoft Corporation UEFI CA' therefore a bootloader signed by Microsoft's UEFI binary signing service (which most popular Linux distros do) cannot be verified. And that means you must disable Secure Boot to boot something other than macOS or Windows. And that means you don't really control, therefore don't really own, your hardware.