19 ms·

For sure. It's nice that open source firmware replacements have been making progress, especially since the Intel ME fiasco, but it never ceases to amaze me that

For sure. It's nice that open source firmware replacements have been making progress, especially since the Intel ME fiasco, but it never ceases to amaze me that right now you can go out and get a modern, ultra high performance workstation with every single chip running auditable firmware. Hopefully we will start seeing more affordable POWER systems now that it is a fully open architecture

acqq 7y ago
> with every single chip running auditable firmware But disks? Isn’t their firmware closed?
- voldacar 7y ago
  Ugh I guess there always has to be an exception. Maybe you could run everything in a ramdisk? It supports up to 2TB of ram after all
- justinclift 7y ago
  Maybe OpenSSD would be functional enough to use: http://openssd.io http://openssd.io http://www.openssd-project.org/wiki/The_OpenSSD_Project http://www.openssd-project.org/wiki/The_OpenSSD_Project
- tpearson-raptor 7y ago
  What you can do with a trusted CPU domain is use FDE. FDE is standard practice for anyone even remotely concerned about security in the first place. So the firmware that matters -- the firmware that can subvert the system due to privilege level, etc. -- is open. No other vendor aside from some lower end ARM toy SoCs can say that.
- throw0101a 7y ago
  > But disks? Isn’t their firmware closed? Encrypt your data in-memory with a file system feature (or something like LUKS/dm-crypt) before it's sent down the SATA cable to the disk. The NSA has gone after disk firmware: * https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/17/kaspersky_labs_equation_group/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/17/kaspersky_labs_equa...
marmaduke 7y ago
Isn't the price tag pretty amazing too?
- voldacar 7y ago
  Well yeah it is hardly cheap but for the people who can afford it, I totally get how having a computer you can trust is worth the price tag
  - Annatar 7y ago
    Most people won't pay that kind of money just to tinker with it.
    - wolfgke 7y ago
      > Most people won't pay that kind of money just to tinker with it. The interesting question rather is: how many of these simply cannot afford it and how many think that this is not worth it?
      - marmaduke 7y ago
        I looked at the Talos website. They're asking 2-4k$ for a 4 core (4 way SMT, so let's say 8 core when comparing to x86_64 just to be nice) dev desktop, with 8 to 16 GB ram. The same spend on a Dell Xeon workstation nets quite a bit more hardware.
- avhception 7y ago
  While not exactly cheap in absolute terms, there is the Blackbird from Raptor. It's a single-CPU board, cheaper than Talos.

acqq 7y ago

> with every single chip running auditable firmware But disks? Isn’t their firmware closed?

voldacar 7y ago
Ugh I guess there always has to be an exception. Maybe you could run everything in a ramdisk? It supports up to 2TB of ram after all
justinclift 7y ago
Maybe OpenSSD would be functional enough to use: http://openssd.io http://openssd.io http://www.openssd-project.org/wiki/The_OpenSSD_Project http://www.openssd-project.org/wiki/The_OpenSSD_Project
tpearson-raptor 7y ago
What you can do with a trusted CPU domain is use FDE. FDE is standard practice for anyone even remotely concerned about security in the first place. So the firmware that matters -- the firmware that can subvert the system due to privilege level, etc. -- is open. No other vendor aside from some lower end ARM toy SoCs can say that.
throw0101a 7y ago
> But disks? Isn’t their firmware closed? Encrypt your data in-memory with a file system feature (or something like LUKS/dm-crypt) before it's sent down the SATA cable to the disk. The NSA has gone after disk firmware: * https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/17/kaspersky_labs_equation_group/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/17/kaspersky_labs_equa...

marmaduke 7y ago

Isn't the price tag pretty amazing too?

voldacar 7y ago
Well yeah it is hardly cheap but for the people who can afford it, I totally get how having a computer you can trust is worth the price tag
- Annatar 7y ago
  Most people won't pay that kind of money just to tinker with it.
  - wolfgke 7y ago
    > Most people won't pay that kind of money just to tinker with it. The interesting question rather is: how many of these simply cannot afford it and how many think that this is not worth it?
    - marmaduke 7y ago
      I looked at the Talos website. They're asking 2-4k$ for a 4 core (4 way SMT, so let's say 8 core when comparing to x86_64 just to be nice) dev desktop, with 8 to 16 GB ram. The same spend on a Dell Xeon workstation nets quite a bit more hardware.
avhception 7y ago
While not exactly cheap in absolute terms, there is the Blackbird from Raptor. It's a single-CPU board, cheaper than Talos.