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A Brief Rundown Of The Spying Questions Intel’s CEO Won't Answer

84 points by danielsiders 13y ago

bananas 13y ago
But he did answer them: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ycs5l/hi_reddit_im_brian_krzanich_ceo_of_intel_ask_me/cfltop4 http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ycs5l/hi_reddit_im_br... The wording is carefully chosen so I'll let people draw their own conclusions from it.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- jnbiche 13y ago
  "First, let me be clear that Intel doesn’t participate in the NSA programs described in recent news reports. Intel does not participate in anyone’s efforts to decrease security in technology. We don’t provide methods for unauthorized access to our products….we don’t create back doors." To me, that statement strongly suggests that Intel is participating in some sort of NSA program. What that is, I have no idea.
  - rosser 13y ago
    It's a barrage of pretty classic "non-denial denials": deny having done things you weren't doing, but which sound enough like the things you were doing, and presumably people will be mollified — or so the theory goes.
  - ama729 13y ago
    > To me, that statement strongly suggests that Intel is participating in some sort of NSA program. Well, they certainly do, since the NSA have some public work on cryptography IIRC.
  - userbinator 13y ago
    > We don’t provide methods for unauthorized access to our products In other words, "we provide methods for authorized access to our products" - and we'll let you figure out who is "authorized".
- MatthiasP 13y ago
  "Intel does not participate in anyone’s efforts to decrease security in technology." - This does look to me to be a pretty strong denial.
  - vinceguidry 13y ago
    Not unless you don't believe giving the NSA a backdoor but no one else constitutes compromising security.
  - x0x0 13y ago
    no, it isn't A strong denial: "Absolutely not" What he wrote (in part): First, let me be clear that Intel doesn’t participate in the NSA programs described in recent news reports. Intel does not participate in anyone’s efforts to decrease security in technology. We don’t provide methods for unauthorized access to our products….we don’t create back doors. if it takes you 44 words to say "Absolutely not" my money is on you lying.
    - chc 13y ago
      I don't think that's really fair. "Absolutely not" isn't even a good response to the question, which was essentially "Can you comment on these issues?" And if he had said that, people would be objecting, "But he didn't specifically say what claims he was saying 'Absolutely not' to, so my money is on him lying." No matter what he had said and regardless of how true or false it had been, people would be reading in lies. He's too detailed, he's too vague, he's too forceful, too weak, too formal, too informal — once somebody is convinced you're a liar, there is very little you can say to change their mind.
  - nnq 13y ago
    the funny bit is "does not participate in anyone’s efforts to decrease security in technology" ...the phrase is truly A GEM. Just to start with, how do you define "not decreasing security"? maybe as "preventing unauthorized access"? But oops, what does "unauthorized" mean and who is "authorized"? And "participate in anyone’s efforts"?! Won't even try to split the possible meanings of that! ...hopefully they do a better job at keeping their hardware backdoors (if they exist) off the "market" than they do at press releases. Nobody needs this for their dirty deeds anyway considering the current state of software security, and even a state agency would be stupid to use such capability even if they had it, for obvious reasons.
yuhong 13y ago
Personally, I asked about early Pentium Ms lacking PAE.
- bananas 13y ago
  That's fairly obvious I think. I'd expect that as Pentium M's were mobile class CPUs, they weren't expected to handle significant quantities of RAM and therefore didn't need PAE. I can't think of a single Pentium M machine I had that ever saw more than 2GB of RAM.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- tacticus 13y ago
  I unfortunately missed the ama but i was hoping someone would ask about the antitrust shit intel did and if he thinks that was appropriate
ama729 13y ago
I'm not knowledgeable in the intricacies of cryptography, so this is something that bug me, how can the Random Number Generator be backdoored in a way that would be usable for the NSA without being detectable? Surely you could graph the numbers that the RNG output and see if it's random or not, no?
- sweettea 13y ago
  A sequence can be completely deterministic and yet pass all randomness tests. For instance, if I tell you I randomly chose numbers between 0 and 16, inclusive, and got 14, 13, 10, 1, 6, 5, 2, 9, in that order, as far as you can tell it looks random. However, x_{n+1} was generated by taking (3 * x_n + 3) % 16, and hence I can predict the next random number in the sequence trivially. [This is a bad random number generator for other reasons --- see Wikipedia on LCGs for more --- but a good demonstration of how random numbers can appear random but be usable by $attacker.]
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    A sequence of digits take from pi or e would be randomly distributed but completely deterministic.
    - jjgreen 13y ago
      It is not known whether the digits of pi are evenly distributed.
      - dredmorbius 13y ago
        NB: what I said was "randomly", not "evenly". Though I doubt we'll ever get to the end of this one.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Surely you could graph the numbers that the RNG output and see if it's random or not, no? Actually, according to numerous people I respect on this (Ted T'so comes to mind): no. It's apparently possible to compromise an RNG in such a way that its output appears to be random -- unless you're aware of the secret.
conformal 13y ago
a favorite song of mine by kool keith comes to mind: "i don't believe you" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc5cOohfHhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc5cOohfHhA ). the world's largest cpu manufacturer, which also happens to be based in the US, _not_ having NSA-mandated backdoors is entirely out-of-the-question. even if the cpus are not backdoored, you can bet all the NIC firmware "happen" to have a remote update path enabled, despite it not having a legitimate application in non-development environments. intel is tre-owned and always has been.
tptacek 13y ago
The article's title is misleading; Intel has answered this question. They deny collaborating with NSA. To that, add that there's no evidence anywhere of any such collusion, and that Intel retained Cryptography Research to assess their CSPRNG design. By pluralizing the word "question", the article injects further misinformation. There's one question people are asking about Intel: "why should we trust the RDRAND instruction?". The question is asked not because there's any evidence that RDRAND is compromised, but because CSPRNGs are a uniquely powerful point in a cryptosystem to insert a backdoor. Backdooring the AES instructions is harder; AES is deterministic, so there's not much you can do with an "evil" AES. Not so with an RNG. But RDRAND is a stupid backdoor. On every mainstream OS, including the two mainstream mobile OSs, RDRAND is (at best) one of several sources of entropy. In the Linux kernel CSPRNG, in FreeBSD's Yarrow, and in WinAPI's CryptGenRandom, controlling one entropy input (or even all but one of them) doesn't make the CSPRNG's output predictable. So even if it is backdoored --- which would be silly --- that backdoor probably doesn't impact you in any meaningful way. Cryptographers are wary of RDRAND. It's a closed, proprietary design. Cryptographers would rather you use urandom to get your randomness, and if the OS wants to use RDRAND as one of its entropy sources, whatever. Cryptographers would say this whether it was Intel's hardware RNG, Apple's, Samsung's, or Broadcom's.
- tinalumfoil 13y ago
  >The article's title is misleading; Intel has answered this question. That's not misleading. That's simple lying.
- cperciva 13y ago
  But RDRAND is a stupid backdoor RDRAND is a very good backdoor for code written by stupid people. There's a lot of application code which detects the presence of RDRAND and uses it directly instead of asking the OS for entropy. (FWIW, I doubt RDRAND is backdoored in the traditional sense. I'm absolutely certain, however, that the NSA will take full advantage of the documented not-enough-entropy failure mode which returns all zeroes -- which most RDRAND-using software does not correctly handle.)
  - tptacek 13y ago
fiatmoney 13y ago
Intel NICs are a far more plausible, useful, and hideable location for a backdoor (or even just an unintentional vulnerability) than RDRAND.

84 points by danielsiders 13y ago

But he did answer them: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ycs5l/hi_reddit_im_brian_krzanich_ceo_of_intel_ask_me/cfltop4 http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ycs5l/hi_reddit_im_br... The wording is carefully chosen so I'll let people draw their own conclusions from it.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jnbiche 13y ago
"First, let me be clear that Intel doesn’t participate in the NSA programs described in recent news reports. Intel does not participate in anyone’s efforts to decrease security in technology. We don’t provide methods for unauthorized access to our products….we don’t create back doors." To me, that statement strongly suggests that Intel is participating in some sort of NSA program. What that is, I have no idea.
- rosser 13y ago
  It's a barrage of pretty classic "non-denial denials": deny having done things you weren't doing, but which sound enough like the things you were doing, and presumably people will be mollified — or so the theory goes.
- ama729 13y ago
  > To me, that statement strongly suggests that Intel is participating in some sort of NSA program. Well, they certainly do, since the NSA have some public work on cryptography IIRC.
- userbinator 13y ago
  > We don’t provide methods for unauthorized access to our products In other words, "we provide methods for authorized access to our products" - and we'll let you figure out who is "authorized".
MatthiasP 13y ago
"Intel does not participate in anyone’s efforts to decrease security in technology." - This does look to me to be a pretty strong denial.
- vinceguidry 13y ago
  Not unless you don't believe giving the NSA a backdoor but no one else constitutes compromising security.
- x0x0 13y ago
  no, it isn't A strong denial: "Absolutely not" What he wrote (in part): First, let me be clear that Intel doesn’t participate in the NSA programs described in recent news reports. Intel does not participate in anyone’s efforts to decrease security in technology. We don’t provide methods for unauthorized access to our products….we don’t create back doors. if it takes you 44 words to say "Absolutely not" my money is on you lying.
  - chc 13y ago
    I don't think that's really fair. "Absolutely not" isn't even a good response to the question, which was essentially "Can you comment on these issues?" And if he had said that, people would be objecting, "But he didn't specifically say what claims he was saying 'Absolutely not' to, so my money is on him lying." No matter what he had said and regardless of how true or false it had been, people would be reading in lies. He's too detailed, he's too vague, he's too forceful, too weak, too formal, too informal — once somebody is convinced you're a liar, there is very little you can say to change their mind.
- nnq 13y ago
  the funny bit is "does not participate in anyone’s efforts to decrease security in technology" ...the phrase is truly A GEM. Just to start with, how do you define "not decreasing security"? maybe as "preventing unauthorized access"? But oops, what does "unauthorized" mean and who is "authorized"? And "participate in anyone’s efforts"?! Won't even try to split the possible meanings of that! ...hopefully they do a better job at keeping their hardware backdoors (if they exist) off the "market" than they do at press releases. Nobody needs this for their dirty deeds anyway considering the current state of software security, and even a state agency would be stupid to use such capability even if they had it, for obvious reasons.

yuhong 13y ago

Personally, I asked about early Pentium Ms lacking PAE.

bananas 13y ago
That's fairly obvious I think. I'd expect that as Pentium M's were mobile class CPUs, they weren't expected to handle significant quantities of RAM and therefore didn't need PAE. I can't think of a single Pentium M machine I had that ever saw more than 2GB of RAM.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
tacticus 13y ago
I unfortunately missed the ama but i was hoping someone would ask about the antitrust shit intel did and if he thinks that was appropriate

ama729 13y ago

I'm not knowledgeable in the intricacies of cryptography, so this is something that bug me, how can the Random Number Generator be backdoored in a way that would be usable for the NSA without being detectable? Surely you could graph the numbers that the RNG output and see if it's random or not, no?

sweettea 13y ago
A sequence can be completely deterministic and yet pass all randomness tests. For instance, if I tell you I randomly chose numbers between 0 and 16, inclusive, and got 14, 13, 10, 1, 6, 5, 2, 9, in that order, as far as you can tell it looks random. However, x_{n+1} was generated by taking (3 * x_n + 3) % 16, and hence I can predict the next random number in the sequence trivially. [This is a bad random number generator for other reasons --- see Wikipedia on LCGs for more --- but a good demonstration of how random numbers can appear random but be usable by $attacker.]
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  A sequence of digits take from pi or e would be randomly distributed but completely deterministic.
  - jjgreen 13y ago
    It is not known whether the digits of pi are evenly distributed.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      NB: what I said was "randomly", not "evenly". Though I doubt we'll ever get to the end of this one.
dredmorbius 13y ago
Surely you could graph the numbers that the RNG output and see if it's random or not, no? Actually, according to numerous people I respect on this (Ted T'so comes to mind): no. It's apparently possible to compromise an RNG in such a way that its output appears to be random -- unless you're aware of the secret.

conformal 13y ago

a favorite song of mine by kool keith comes to mind: "i don't believe you" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc5cOohfHhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc5cOohfHhA ). the world's largest cpu manufacturer, which also happens to be based in the US, _not_ having NSA-mandated backdoors is entirely out-of-the-question. even if the cpus are not backdoored, you can bet all the NIC firmware "happen" to have a remote update path enabled, despite it not having a legitimate application in non-development environments. intel is tre-owned and always has been.

tptacek 13y ago

The article's title is misleading; Intel has answered this question. They deny collaborating with NSA. To that, add that there's no evidence anywhere of any such collusion, and that Intel retained Cryptography Research to assess their CSPRNG design. By pluralizing the word "question", the article injects further misinformation. There's one question people are asking about Intel: "why should we trust the RDRAND instruction?". The question is asked not because there's any evidence that RDRAND is compromised, but because CSPRNGs are a uniquely powerful point in a cryptosystem to insert a backdoor. Backdooring the AES instructions is harder; AES is deterministic, so there's not much you can do with an "evil" AES. Not so with an RNG. But RDRAND is a stupid backdoor. On every mainstream OS, including the two mainstream mobile OSs, RDRAND is (at best) one of several sources of entropy. In the Linux kernel CSPRNG, in FreeBSD's Yarrow, and in WinAPI's CryptGenRandom, controlling one entropy input (or even all but one of them) doesn't make the CSPRNG's output predictable. So even if it is backdoored --- which would be silly --- that backdoor probably doesn't impact you in any meaningful way. Cryptographers are wary of RDRAND. It's a closed, proprietary design. Cryptographers would rather you use urandom to get your randomness, and if the OS wants to use RDRAND as one of its entropy sources, whatever. Cryptographers would say this whether it was Intel's hardware RNG, Apple's, Samsung's, or Broadcom's.

tinalumfoil 13y ago
>The article's title is misleading; Intel has answered this question. That's not misleading. That's simple lying.
cperciva 13y ago
But RDRAND is a stupid backdoor RDRAND is a very good backdoor for code written by stupid people. There's a lot of application code which detects the presence of RDRAND and uses it directly instead of asking the OS for entropy. (FWIW, I doubt RDRAND is backdoored in the traditional sense. I'm absolutely certain, however, that the NSA will take full advantage of the documented not-enough-entropy failure mode which returns all zeroes -- which most RDRAND-using software does not correctly handle.)
- tptacek 13y ago

fiatmoney 13y ago

Intel NICs are a far more plausible, useful, and hideable location for a backdoor (or even just an unintentional vulnerability) than RDRAND.