https://puri.sm/posts/petition-for-intel-to-release-an-me-less-cpu-design/I know that many folks in the cryptocurrency community are concerned and interested in concepts like privacy, freedom, and security. While cryptocurrency can be a great tool towards these ends, the state of our hardware is very concerning.
We do not have control of our devices. Secret bits of code reside in our computers, in places like the processor that acts like a rootkit, loads with every boot, and is beyond our ability to control or modify. It provides a means for introducing privacy-invading, freedom-reducing, security-infringing code on our devices whether we like it or not and without our knowledge.
One researcher, Joanna Rutkowska, has thought deeply about these issues and has proposed what she calls a stateless laptop. To generalize, a stateless laptop pulls all stateful memory like the bios out of the computer and its hardware and places it on a read-only 'trusted stick,' which is used to boot the computer. Even OS's like Tails cannot get around the loss of privacy, freedom, and security that results from built-in stateful hardware memory that is beyond our control.
http://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/state_harmful.pdfJoanna Rutkowska has also created an amazing version of Linux called Qubes OS which allows users to basically sandbox just about every process on the computer.
One manufacturer, Purism, has begun to implement Joanna's ideas.
https://puri.sm They are already producing high-end computers with hard-wired switches for things like cameras, microphones, wifi and the like, allowing users to know for sure whether something is accessible or not. They also run Qubes OS. In doing so, they have greatly increased privacy, freedom, and security for their users.
However, Purism can only take things so far. Currently, all Intel processors contain Intel's Management Engine. Intel’s Management Engine (ME) is a threat to users’ digital rights. It is an unreadable binary file that is cryptographically signed by Intel, requiring users to compromise their security, privacy, and freedom because users must execute unknown and unverifiable code on the CPU. Because ME is built in and beyond user control, a stateless laptop appears to be unachievable with Intel technology.
Purism has been trying to convince Intel to produce an ME-less processor, but Intel has yet to be convinced. If Intel were to produce an ME-less processor, Purism would be very close to being able to produce a stateless laptop of the sort that Joanna Rutkowska envisioned.
PLEASE sign Purism's petition to Intel to produce a ME-less processor so that our common goals of privacy, freedom, and security can be better attained.
https://puri.sm/posts/petition-for-intel-to-release-an-me-less-cpu-design/
