Hardware Backdoors: Intel Management Engine (good detailed anonymity / privacy threat article)
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Hardware Backdoors: Intel Management Engine (good detailed anonymity / privacy threat article)Posted by righttoprivacy in Privacy
The First Part of the Series of Articles "Hardware Backdoors" – Intel ME
Article content:
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Introduction to hardware backdoors.
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Explanation of what “Intel ME” is. Closed source code, big rights, your own MAC and IP addresses, bypassing firewalls, and much more.
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Threats that “Intel ME” can pose. What “Intel ME” is potentially capable of – from accessing the web camera and microphone to remotely turning the computer on and off and "enhanced" remote access to the computer.
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Why “Intel ME” is dangerous even if you’re not a target to intelligence agencies. Vulnerabilities found in “Intel ME” and threats from hacker groups, including from “Conti”.
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“Intel ME” can bypass almost any firewall. Potentially, “Intel ME” is dangerous even when there is no internet connection.
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Disabling “Intel ME”. Various methods to significantly interfere with an attacker from “Intel ME”.
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Due to what reasons, fully protecting against “Intel ME” or completely disabling it is almost impossible. Even “Coreboot/Libreboot with the HAP” method does not fully disable “Intel ME”.
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Protection methods (Spoiler – fully protecting against “Intel ME” is almost impossible), and a suggestion of an alternative solution to the “Intel ME” problem.
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“Intel ME” is only one of the potentially numerous hardware backdoors, and even if you solve the “Intel ME” issue, there will likely still be many other backdoors on your computer.
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Evidence of intelligence agencies' involvement with “Intel ME”, in fact, “Intel ME” closely resembles a backdoor, and likely is one.
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Why “Intel ME” is perhaps one of the most effective potential backdoors for intelligence agencies.
It’s likely that one of the biggest “holes” in security, privacy and anonymity are hardware backdoors.
[ ARTICLE DATE JAN 2025-continued at link ]
I definitely believe there is merit to the backdoor thing - how could you not see it this way? An unremovable highly obfuscated co-processor with full network access, wifi hardware whitelisted connected to wifi card offering remote access AMT and interesting vulnerabilities that seek to hide access in various ways including ipv6.
I'm perfectly happy on Intel ME neutered thinkpads. Just feels "cleaner".
Good article IMHO. Much longer than I could share here (character limit).