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Intel won't back down on chip ID feature (1999)
- xony 4y ago[dead]
- jeffbee 4y ago[flagged]
- bboygravity 4y agoOr you assign and track serial numbers yourself, like people do with, say, literally every other object in every large scale operation in the history of humanity? For that reason exist (e)SIMs, bar codes, qr codes, serial numbers in general, serial numbers of assemblies, serial numbers of sub-assemblies, serial numbers of parts, etc. You don't need a manufacturer to give something a serial number?
- yarg 4y agoSerial numbers are rather useful from a validation standpoint, counterfeiting is a real danger.
- super256 4y agoThere is still a serial number printed on the box, and a batch number on the box AND heat spreader. A part of the serial number (assembly test process order number) is also printed on the CPU package (not the box, but the actual die carrier). So, even if the counterfeiter made the effort to replace the heat spreader, you could still find out. Edit: Talking about Intel CPUs obviously.
- yarg 4y agoThat's fine for a small number of computers, but it doesn't scale.
- burnte 4y agoMy life is not for sale just to make yours easier.
- crmd 4y agoA year later: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2594698/intel-to-phase-out-processor-serial-numbers.amp.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2594698/intel-to-phase...
- jmole 4y agoaren't all processors serialized these days? the problem here seems to be the software exposing private information in inappropriate ways...
- burnte 4y agoNo.
- no_time 4y agoNo but HDDs are. And GPUs. And NICs. To get a picture of how much unique information is present on every PC these days, look at one of the pasted anticheat HWID spoofers on GitHub. EDIT: found this nifty list https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/anti-cheat-bypass/333662-methods-retrieving-unique-identifiers-hwids-pc.html https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/anti-cheat-bypass/333662-...
- MertsA 4y agoThere's the PPIN MSR on some CPUs but access to it needs to be enabled in FW before you can read it.
- lend000 4y agoI wonder how much Microsoft paid them for this. As I understand it, historically, the Windows license for a particular installation was tied to the CPU's id.
- jeffbee 4y agoYou do not understand it correctly, then, because very few Intel CPUs have ever contained a readable serial number.
- api 4y agoBack then people took the idea of privacy really seriously. From what I saw what mostly killed it was the mobile phone revolution. The entire mobile ecosystem was basically built to productize the user. A few oddballs pointed this out and were ignored because phones are shiny. The "mobile mentality" bled back into the entire rest of the computing ecosystem and this is where we are today. Ultimately it's rooted in economics. People like free stuff, and the only way to give it to them is to monetize it indirectly via ads and surveillance.
- jeffbee 4y ago"Back then" everyone's name, address, and phone number was printed in a big book that was distributed for free to everyone in town.
- api 4y agoYou could opt out of that and many people did. Opting out required contacting one entity once. In fact I seem to recall that they asked if you wanted your number listed when you got a phone line, at least in some places. It requires a tremendous amount of technical skill and diligence to opt out of the everything-is-malware hellscape we (our industry) created.
- gramie 4y agoYou had to pay to keep your number/address unlisted. It wasn't just a request.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y agoNot in the UK you didn't.
- nilespotter 4y ago[dead]
- ssss11 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jasoneckert 4y agoRelated and noteworthy is the 1999 quote from Scott McNealy (CEO of Sun Microsystems): "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."
- mepian 4y ago[flagged]
- filoleg 4y agoThat quote was made by a very important (at the time) person in the tech industry, about 16 years before Trump had even announced his run for presidency. His present-time support for Trump doesn't have much to tell me about the events that happened close to two decades prior, in an entirely different context. P.S. Among many others, one of the reasons I was excited about Trump's presidency ending was the hope that I won't have to be digging through "orangemanbad" quips in conversations about entirely unrelated topics anymore. Oh boy how unreasonably optimistic I was about it.
- dang 4y agoPlease don't take HN threads into flamewar, regardless of how nice someone isn't or you feel they aren't. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 23B1 4y agoHad a doctor say a version of this when we turned down genetic testing of our newborn. I was like "That isn't the argument you want to make with me." haha. You see, in our state, it is law to take the blood of the newborn to test for disease. Sounds sorta okay until you learn that the state has been selling the genetic data of your offspring without your consent. It's a quiet issue that is happening in a few states currently: https://newjerseymonitor.com/2022/09/19/parents-score-victory-in-civil-rights-battle-over-baby-blood-spots/ https://newjerseymonitor.com/2022/09/19/parents-score-victor...
- kepler1 4y agoMaybe someone remind me, why Intel leadership thought they should get into the business of doing this?
- wmf 4y agoThe feature was basically free so they figured any value they could generate from it was free money. That thinking backfired.
- EntrePrescott 4y agosetMode(CONSPIRACY_THEORY); maybe because the NSA had enough compromising stuff (aka kompromat) on some high-enough Intel bigwig(s) to convince them to implement it. As in: "a nice career and family life you got there. Would be a pity if that all went down the drain just because of some stupid scandal, wouldn't it? Besides, by pushing this simple little feature for us, you'll be proving to be a real patriot. You wouldn't want to be a non-patriot now, would you?"
- provenance 4y agoIs there any evidence to suggest kompromat has ever been used to blackmail American tech executives to backdoor their products for NSA or other agency?
- simoncion 4y agoIf there were any solid evidence, then the program would be unable to continue, because -in large part- the folks being blackmailed would have solid reason to distrust that the blackmailer would actually keep their secrets. There is circumstantial evidence that the NSA is shady as shit. A few notable items: 1) The NSA coerced nearly every major and minor telco in the US to assist in their ongoing highly-illegal domestic wiretapping operations. (When this came to light, Congress retroactively immunized (from prosecution) those telcos that assisted the NSA in breaking the law.) 2) The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper knowingly lied by omission before Congress about the scope and nature of NSA's domestic wiretapping operations. 3) The NSA's lawyers lied under oath to the US Supreme Court about the NSA's various domestic wiretapping operations. In a similar way, there's no solid evidence that TSA was a combination jobs program, massive money-making program for then-VP Dick Cheney's business buddies and their pretty-useless microwave-imaging device company, and internal contraband-and-warrant checkpoint-establishment program. But when you compare the organization's stated goals with what it actually achieves, and how it responds to criticism at the difference between the two, it's pretty clear that its stated aims are substantially different from its actual aims.
- no_time 4y agoOutcry over a single non crypto-enforced ID seems almost cute with todays treacherous technology like MS Pluton and ARM TrustZone.
- userbinator 4y agoThey managed to sneak in far worse, once they realised the general population will believe anything if told it's for "security".
- EGreg 4y agoGeneral population isnt even aware of most things, no need to even sneak or explain Neither are you, in most fields
- matheusmoreira 4y agoI miss those early days when we could be optimistic about the future. It seems like every year that passes we descend further into a cyberpunk dystopia. Computers used to empower us, now they empower others to control us.
- msylvest 4y agoIn those days I worked for Intel in a branch in Copenhagen, Denmark. Doing Ethernet stuff, pretty far from the CPU dev and fab running the company. Incidentally Phil Zimmermann, maker of PGP, was in town, giving a lecture on privacy. I had the chance of asking him of his opinion; he reflected and said: "I think Intel has made a mistake." I agreed but didn't expect Intel mgmt to take action on this. And for a year I was right. In 2000, the serial numbers were quietly removed. Just to be re-added some years later....
- dang 4y agoUrl changed from https://web.archive.org/web/20010419012218/http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/7/ns-7095.html https://web.archive.org/web/20010419012218/http://www.zdnet.... to something more like the original source. (Archive.org links are fine if there's really nothing else available, but please try to find an original source first.)
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agoThe notion of internet privacy was more refined back then. Notice the reference to an "e-commerce transaction". IMHO, people in the early days understood that making purchases or other commercial transactions was only one use of the internet. Today, every use of the internet is targeted with surveillance, including all the noncommercial uses. Today, functional equivalents of "IDs" are sent 24/7, even without user input, not only when a user chooses to engage in commerce.^1 Scott McNealy, then CEO of Sun Microsystems: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/ https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/ 1. And so-called "tech" companies are constantly trying to establish more forms of "ID". It's time to regulate this nonsense.