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Intel x86 considered harmful – survey of attacks against x86 over last 10 years

(blog.invisiblethings.org)
276 points chei0aiV | 4 comments | 27 Oct 15 14:51 UTC | HN request time: 1.029s | source
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n0us ◴[27 Oct 15 15:13 UTC] No.10458463[source]▶
I really could do without "considered harmful" titles. x86 has been one of the most influential technologies of all time and a clickbait title doesn't do it justice imo.
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1. PaulHoule ◴[27 Oct 15 15:51 UTC] No.10458787[source]▶
My main problem is with the term x86 because the article conflates form-factor issues (people can spy on you with the microphone in your phone, even the old analog telephone or tablet or game controller, Amazon Echo,...) with x86 issues (some real problems with the architecture in general) and the ME issue which is an intel thing.
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2. scott_karana ◴[27 Oct 15 16:02 UTC] No.10458882[source]▶
> and the ME issue which is an intel thing.

> But is the situation much different on AMD-based x86 platforms? It doesn’t seem so! The problems related to boot security seem to be similar to those we discussed in this paper. And it seems AMD has an equivalent of Intel ME also, just disguised as Platform Security Processor (PSP)

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3. pgeorgi ◴[27 Oct 15 16:20 UTC] No.10459041[source]▶
The PSP is still a processor with elevated privileges, but it doesn't seem to have the ability to drive the network interface.

But she's right insofar as that x86 vendors are either in on this (mostly to satisfy the DRM-hungry Hollywood connection - most of these features have "DRM" written all over them, not "user security") or irrelevant (Via still ships its 20 slow x86 CPU samples per year that nobody wants, probably to avoid losing their x86 license).

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4. ◴[28 Oct 15 06:23 UTC] No.10463083{3}[source]▶