https://hackaday.com/2016/11/28/neutralizing-intels-management-engine/ This seems like HUGE news to me. Its not anywhere near as good as having open hardware, but I'll take being able to disable it! I have an Ivy Bridge CPU, but its a laptop and I've never done anything of this scope before- I would do this in a heartbeat on a desktop. **EDIT** First time posting a news link; I didnt put in a quote...
OOOOO. I yelled about Intel's creepy stuff months ago. Now, a faint glimmer of hope. I don't know what the author means here: "With a BeagleBone, an SOIC-8 chip clip, and a few breakout wires, this script will run and effectively disable the ME." but it sounds like inroads. Thank you, thank you for this article that says "it's potentially possible to rid your machine of this Hydra. Someday, maybe."
It explains it here. It's certainly not for the faint of heart; Im debating whether to try it myself- I have an Ivy bridge Thinkpad so it should work, but its my only computer atm. Id rather try this with a desktop machine where I have easier access (and if I fry something, Im only out a $200 motherboard instead of $800 motherboard). But make no mistake- this can be done now if you've got the hardware and the guts. Its certainly good news
The other good news - if it works - is that it could be semi-industrialised, or at least be made into a cottage industry. Just waiting to see if they claim this is anti-DRM....
Agreed . That whole Intel ME business has been a stone in my shoe since I first read about it , and I just assumed that I'd have to live with it for all time . But I'm starting to wish that I'd never read this post I got involved , and then spent far more time than I intended on running down the good quality links , and this presentation from Igor Skochinsky is superb , so I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in further details of how Intel ME actually functions . On the hardware side it's all fairly easy to do , and with change from fifty bucks ! As far as the software / firmware goes it also looks good , and similar code is in various places ( I can post links if requested ) But I think it's worth quoting from libreboot - "It is extremely unlikely that any post-2008 Intel hardware will ever be supported in libreboot, due to severe security and freedom issues; so severe, that the libreboot project recommends avoiding all modern Intel hardware. If you have an Intel based system affected by the problems described below, then you should get rid of it as soon as possible. " I'm still fascinated by the idea , but I don't have a recent enough machine that I'm willing to sacrifice to the cause . If it all goes disastrously wrong it seems certain that recovery will be "challenging" , to put it mildly -
Likewise, and thanks for the additional information. I have a spare desktop mobo that I might give it a go on, see what smoke arises. I've been mulling over the fragmentation of the internet that will happen, is happening, as evidenced by Russian use of Chinese firewall technology and kickback against US social media companies, for example - inevitable consequences of the over-reach. In relation to this problem, I suspect that the Chinese are busy making a set of processors which are not backdoored by Intel/AMD/Arm - as a strategic necessity, that would seem to me to be obvious, perhaps the Mips or Sparc stuff that is mentioned in the article. Anyway, if we're "lucky", a very witty thing for them to do would be to drop some open-source Soc mobos on the West (while backdooring them internally).
