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No, it is totally inconceivable AMD and Intel CPUs are backdoored this way. Inserting a microcontroller somewhere on the Ethernet traces and then using IPMI is
by chx 8y ago
No, it is totally inconceivable AMD and Intel CPUs are backdoored this way. Inserting a microcontroller somewhere on the Ethernet traces and then using IPMI is not as sophisticated as this article wants to describe. Sophistication is necessary from the payload to be stealthy but not the hardware.
There are at least two problems with China messing with CPUs: a) they are not made there. TSMC is Taiwan, the Asian parts of Global Foundries are in Singapore, Intel is manufacturing CPUs mostly in the USA with some in Ireland and Israel, only 3DNAND / 3DXPoint ICs are made in China. b) the hardware knowledge to change here, well, think of it, the microcontroller on the motherboard is on the few millimetres scale, the parts here are on the few ten nanometres scale so as a rough but not unjust quantifications would say it's 100 000 times harder.
Whether the platforms are hackable / hacked, that's harder to say thanks Intel ME and such but the CPUs aren't.
- simias 8y agoI don't think the parent was talking about this specific type of attacks but other types of hardware backdoors. I think the answer to that is very obviously yes, and given what we know about intelligence agencies I'm even willing to go as far as saying that it is likely (or at least, if you have reasons to be worried about Uncle Sam getting to your stuff you should consider it a very real possibility). Modern ASICs are so complex that I'm sure that sneaking a tiny backdoor into the behemoth that's a modern CPU or embedded SoC would be almost trivial. They'd also have great plausible deniability in case they're found, if something like SPECTRE was an intentional backdoor how would you ever prove it for instance?
- wepple 8y ago> Modern ASICs are so complex that I'm sure that sneaking a tiny backdoor into the behemoth that's a modern CPU or embedded SoC would be almost trivial. I suspect putting in a backdoor would be difficult because they are complex. Wouldn’t it be far too easy for the backdoor to inadvertently cause reliability or performance issues? And the bug would have to be useful enough to warrant potentially destroying the semiconductor business of a nation, not just some difficult to trigger side channel.
- whatpad 8y agoNobody cares about your wild, uneducated speculation.
- wepple 8y agoWelcome to HN. You’ll find that kind of negative comment which doesn’t really add to the discussion isn’t valued here. It wasn’t wild nor uneducated; I have some experience with FPGAs and the challenges of complex circuit design - regardless, I was posing a question rather than stating fact. Do you disagree with what I suggested? Educate me, correct my speculation.
- dang 8y agoPlease be civil here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago> No, it is totally inconceivable AMD and Intel CPUs are backdoored this way. That’s a fairly strong statement. It could be argued it is conceivable as evidenced by the fact we are here talking about it. Also, I’ve read that it’s impossible for any one person to fully comprehend the circuit diagram of a modern CPU. In light of that it seems conceviable any number of wayward circuits could be hidden.