4 ms·

This stuff is really cool but in a world with IME it's sadly, moot. What good does a secure OS do you if the hardware has a fully embedded OS tied to both your

This stuff is really cool but in a world with IME it's sadly, moot. What good does a secure OS do you if the hardware has a fully embedded OS tied to both your keyboard and Ethernet adapter such that it can transparently send and receive anything you are doing?

jamesy0ung 5y ago
Get a laptop that can have it removed? I've done it on IVB ThinkPads.
BobbyJo 5y ago
If you don't want anyone knowing who you are you're stuck using only public wifi anyway. Who cares if they build a profile around a piece of hardware? As long as they can't link it to a real human it's not really an issue.
JackGreyhat 5y ago
Can IME decrypt network traffic if tails runs inside a VM?
- rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
  decrypt, no, however it has visibility of the entire memory and so can read from pages backing the VM containing pre-encryption and post-decrypted content. Presumably that means that it could detect known strings in raw memory from a known embedded list. I believe it would be unlikely to use network to obtain some kind of real time list, we would know about it if this was the case. It might be possible to push updated bad string lists embedded encrypted in firmware.
Datagenerator 5y ago
Are these AMT of AMD and Intel Pro, features that create mesh networks on the fly?
Forbo 5y ago
How many adversaries have the ability to act on that risk? I hate the security defeatism that is rampant across the space. The perfect is the enemy of the good and all that. Unless your threat model includes nation state adversaries (or individuals/orgs with similar levels of skill and funding) explicitly targeting you, worrying about IME/PSP is probably completely unwarranted. Unless I'm unaware of active exploitation campaigns against these systems, in which case I would love to learn more. Edit: Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a world where the entire system is open from hardware on up. Unfortunately I don't know that we'll get there without some substantial shifts in humanity as a whole.
deleted 5y ago
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jamesy0ung 5y ago

Get a laptop that can have it removed? I've done it on IVB ThinkPads.

BobbyJo 5y ago

If you don't want anyone knowing who you are you're stuck using only public wifi anyway. Who cares if they build a profile around a piece of hardware? As long as they can't link it to a real human it's not really an issue.

JackGreyhat 5y ago

Can IME decrypt network traffic if tails runs inside a VM?

rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
decrypt, no, however it has visibility of the entire memory and so can read from pages backing the VM containing pre-encryption and post-decrypted content. Presumably that means that it could detect known strings in raw memory from a known embedded list. I believe it would be unlikely to use network to obtain some kind of real time list, we would know about it if this was the case. It might be possible to push updated bad string lists embedded encrypted in firmware.

Datagenerator 5y ago

Are these AMT of AMD and Intel Pro, features that create mesh networks on the fly?

Forbo 5y ago

How many adversaries have the ability to act on that risk? I hate the security defeatism that is rampant across the space. The perfect is the enemy of the good and all that. Unless your threat model includes nation state adversaries (or individuals/orgs with similar levels of skill and funding) explicitly targeting you, worrying about IME/PSP is probably completely unwarranted. Unless I'm unaware of active exploitation campaigns against these systems, in which case I would love to learn more. Edit: Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a world where the entire system is open from hardware on up. Unfortunately I don't know that we'll get there without some substantial shifts in humanity as a whole.

deleted 5y ago

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