From: news@druck.org.uk   
      
   On 11/02/2024 14:52, The Natural Philosopher wrote:   
   > I think that its pretty difficult to encode an invisible backdoor in the   
   > silicon and not have it spotted at some fairly early stage.   
      
   Then don't hide it, have it there in plain sight - like the Intel   
   Management Engine, and the AMD equivalent.   
      
   > So many of these 'threat narratives' are, when examined closely,   
   > implausible to the point of downright impossibility.   
      
   The more you examine details of the IME that we know about, the more   
   worrying it gets. It's a CPU within CPU running closed software with   
   higher privilege than main CPU, able to access all memory, any hardware   
   and create its own network connections.   
      
   > You can examine the machine code that your compiler and linker   
   > assembles. And people do. I certainly have done. If it doesn't match   
   > what you asked for in the high level language, there are questions to be   
   > answered.   
      
   You can look at the assembler of the main CPU as much as you like, but   
   you've no idea what is running on the IME.   
      
   Luckily ARM doesn't have a management engine - yet!   
      
   ---druck   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)