[Cryptography] What is Intel® Core™ vPro™ Technology Animation

d.nix d.nix at comcast.net
Sun Sep 22 19:56:15 EDT 2013


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On 9/22/2013 2:23 PM, Jerry Leichter wrote:
> On Sep 21, 2013, at 10:05 PM, d.nix wrote:
>> Hah hah hah. Uh, reading between the lines, color me *skeptical*
>> that this is really what it claims to be, given the current
>> understanding of things...
>> 
>> http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/enterprise-security/what-is-vpro-technology-video.html
>
>> 
The question isn't whether it's what it claims to be.  It is that.  But
is it's *more* than it claims to be.
> 

Yes, in my haste I neglected the "only" disclaimer bit; it is indeed a
means by which the *rightful owner/administrator* might perform very
useful tasks. The obvious crux of the biscuit is *who else* has
access, and what can they do surreptitiously?

If for example, the paper regarding manipulating the RNG circuit by
alternate chip doping is valid, then an adversary with deep pockets
and vast resources might well be able remotely target specific systems
on demand. Possibly even air gapped ones if this function is
controllable via a 3G signal as I have read elsewhere.

Or perhaps just outright reroute and tap information prior to
encryption, or subtly corrupt things in other ways such that processes
fail or leak data. A universal on-demand STUXNET, if you will... Yes,
idle unfounded speculation, I know... but still... these days the fear
is that we're not paranoid enough.

Hmmmm. Maybe time to pull my old 1996 SGI R10K and R4400 boxes out of
storage. For a few *very* dedicated and air gapped tasks they might be
a small measure of worthwhile trouble.

Regards,

DN


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