Hi, I just heard about this today and did a bit of research on it, but the things I found were too technically savvy for me, and some were quiet ambiguous in their explanations. Before I ask the question, I would like to say that I do understand technical terms relating to computers and their hardware, but I might not fully get some of the acronyms. That being said, my main questions are:
What the hell is Intel ME and also AMDs PSP? What do they do – what’s the point of having them? Why can’t we just integrate all the management software onto the CPU and must rely on a separate independent processor (is that what it is)? What protection ring would it be classified as (might help to explain how the layers may interact with one another)? Finally, how big of a security risk does it pose?
I know those are a bunch of questions and they will implicit a large and thought-out response, but to anyone who has knowledge about this specific niche and has the time, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks again.
In: 58
Intel ME is, in fact, a completely separate processor running its own operating system stored in a firmware chip on your bios. The features are that it makes its own decisions regardless of the opinions of your host OS for the most part, and can run even when the system is sleeping. It can be considered to have *more* control and permissions than even your operating system of the hardware. For protection ring, it’s usually colloquially referred to as ring -3, with -1 being a hypervisor and 0 being the kernel itself.
Now, what does it use these powers to do? DRM. That’s probably the biggest. Letting the OS handle that allows things like pesky users trying to circumvent DRM. It also provides some sort of built-in anti-theft. There are probably other security features it does as well, and it can be used by the processors for other cases like deciding what runs where, but it’s not open source and is pretty much a black box. I’m sure some security people have tried to reverse parts of it.
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