Intel Hack is NSA backdoor 'Discovered', NSA created BITCOIN - What's to worry?

[bitfools]

So a kid found the backdoor on the INTEL chip, and its ten years old, we all knew that the NSA had a back-door in the chip, most governments on earth don't allow these chips for this reason in sensitive areas,

All the routers and stuff its same, Microsoft has been working with NSA since 1990's, all mobile phones are NSA, hell even PUTIN says "Google is NSA"

So a kid in his 20's busted them we all knew this was a matter of time the Snowden leaks showed this,

BITCOIN is NSA, the white paper is NSA "How to mine a mint"(1996), SHA-256 is NSA,

PPL ask here how does the INTEL leak affect our BITCOIN, well it means that all is fair now, everybody of earth can now spy like the "NSA"

Intel has special instructions for CRYPTOGRAPHY, so they know when your doing crypto, and we knew these backdoors were in the chip;

No worry average person on this forum has 0.05 BTc, not likely a target by the NSA

More interesting is how the chinese/russian hackers will use this new information, its just another vector or path, into the bowels of Bitcoin.

You all have your wallet on your smart-phone (google-nsa), its not like they didn't have you all along, besides they created bitcoin to track&control your spending, your phones  job is your location, and what your saying, and doing

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[AGD]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=948636.msg10387510#msg10387510

There is no big business without national interest. If you have a tech company and make millions, you are making part of national security already. Intel IS part of the national security since the 70s. You think Bill Gates would have sold his OS, if he refused the offer from the guys in the black suits back in the days?

[aleksej996]

All of this is very possible, but let's not get ahead of ourselves like we have the proof already.
When people accept something as a fact without proof, even if they are right, they stop looking for proof as hard as they otherwise would.

Also there wasn't one "kid", there was a whole team of researchers.
And the "BITCOIN is NSA" part, a bit of an overreach, not that it would mean that Bitcoin is bad even if it was true.
Let's not forget that Tor was developed by US military and also the Internet and neither was a secret nor was bad for humanity.

Sometimes government agencies want to be anonymous as well. Especially if they like getting involved in other government's business.

It is not that black and white. Sometimes governments need to mask their operations by hiding in the crowd, so they gift the weapon to all, so no one knows when they use it and when their weaker enemies use it.
And when their weak enemies use it, it just gives them more justification for their existence.

[Ucy]

Some of your theories make no sense bro, sorry.
 Bitcoin can still run on non-intel PCs, right?  Unfortunately my laptops have Intel chips but what stops me from switching to Local or Chinese PCs to run my cryptocurrency Businesses?


We may well start focusing more on Transparency, Open source Technologies and Honesty.   Too much powers have been given to governments and companies already.



 My advice to us is never to throw all our lives/assets into digital currencies, virtual assets or the Internet. We must have lots of physical assets as well.

  Anyway,  we brought the evil upon ourselves by being too  fearful, self-centered and gullible.

He is in total control,whether we believe or not. Que será, será

[Ucy]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=948636.msg10387510#msg10387510

There is no big business without national interest. If you have a tech company and make millions, you are making part of national security already. Intel IS part of the national security since the 70s. You think Bill Gates would have sold his OS, if he refused the offer from the guys in the black suits back in the days?

And it is no coincidence that those working hard to destroy Bitcoin are accused of one thing or another or are ex-convincts. . .  Intelligence Agencies are known to use these kind of persons.
And many being self centered will do ANYTHING to secure their freedom or get paid. Very unfortunate World.

[cellard]

Some of your theories make no sense bro, sorry.
 Bitcoin can still run on non-intel PCs, right?  Unfortunately my laptops have Intel chips but what stops me from switching to Local or Chinese PCs to run my cryptocurrency Businesses?


We may well start focusing more on Transparency, Open source Technologies and Honesty.   Too much powers have been given to governments and companies already.



 My advice to us is never to throw all our lives/assets into digital currencies, virtual assets or the Internet. We must have lots of physical assets as well.

  Anyway,  we brought the evil upon ourselves by being too  fearful, self-centered and gullible.

He is in total control,whether we believe or not. Que será, será

Lol, as if Chinese computers didn't had their own spying-chips on them, same goes for the Russian computers and so on.

There's no escape basically. Just get a robust linux laptop, libreboot it, and use it as cold storage. First, entirely wipe the hardisk, then install a linux distro of choice, and then generate the keys there. As long as your keys never saw the internet you should be safe.

Just consider that everything you do online is compromised by default. If SHA256 has a backdoor, I don't know about that, but we could always hardfork Bitcoin into a non-compromised algo.

[greg_kwski]

as far as I know AMD processors suffer the same problem though not as massive as intel's
Do you guys think this will usher in a new processor era, that will focus on privacy?

[cellard]

as far as I know AMD processors suffer the same problem though not as massive as intel's
Do you guys think this will usher in a new processor era, that will focus on privacy?

This is the only good thing that could come from events like this... then again, I have little hope about big changes in how people percieve their lack of privacy. Most people are complete morons when it comes to any of this, case in point, Microsoft still has the clear monopoly on desktop OS usage. If people cared about any of this, no one would use windows, but even I have a windows machine that I use mostly for videogames and video production because linux sucks for that, unfortunately.

What we would need is completely open source CPU with the idea of bitcoin on mind, to secure private keys and transactions. Until we can have completely open source computers we will not be safe. It is completely insane that we are using computers and trusting that the chips will not have strange things on them, such as IME.

[darkangel11]

Some of your theories make no sense bro, sorry.
 Bitcoin can still run on non-intel PCs, right?  Unfortunately my laptops have Intel chips but what stops me from switching to Local or Chinese PCs to run my cryptocurrency Businesses?

Of course it can, although the fact that AMD chips haven't had any flaws discovered doesn't mean they won't. Who knows what kind of backdoors they might have...
Anyway I'm still going to buy an AMD for my new PC. Who knows how the Intel chips will perform after the fix has been implemented. For now they're claiming performance might go down by 30% which is a disaster. They should offer me a refund!

AMD is rising after its rival central processing unit maker, Intel, was reported to have a security issue embedded in its hardware.
AMD shares are up 6.51% at $11.69 on Wednesday, while Intel shares slipped 2.45% to $45.70.
http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/amd-stock-price-is-gaining-as-intel-scrambles-to-fix-security-flaw-2018-1-1012439374

My advice to us is never to throw all our lives/assets into digital currencies, virtual assets or the Internet. We must have lots of physical assets as well.

  Anyway,  we brought the evil upon ourselves by being too  fearful, self-centered and gullible.

He is in total control,whether we believe or not. Que será, será

The problem with physical assets like real estate is that you get linked to a country and the state of your investment will depend on that country's moves. If they decide to raise the taxes you'll lose, if they decide to go to war you'll also lose, if they get an economic embargo like North Korea... you know what will happen

[Spendulus]

as far as I know AMD processors suffer the same problem though not as massive as intel's
Do you guys think this will usher in a new processor era, that will focus on privacy?

This is the only good thing that could come from events like this... then again, I have little hope about big changes in how people percieve their lack of privacy. Most people are complete morons when it comes to any of this, case in point, Microsoft still has the clear monopoly on desktop OS usage. If people cared about any of this, no one would use windows, but even I have a windows machine that I use mostly for videogames and video production because linux sucks for that, unfortunately.

What we would need is completely open source CPU with the idea of bitcoin on mind, to secure private keys and transactions. Until we can have completely open source computers we will not be safe. It is completely insane that we are using computers and trusting that the chips will not have strange things on them, such as IME.

I disagree, but before getting mad hear me out.

The first thing you must have is knowledge of, and possibly control of, the outflow of info from your devices.

For each program that runs, all of it's reporting upstream should be knowable.

If this were accomplished, it would be possible to use devices/software even though they are considered compromised.

[LeGaulois]

In this case, we could go even further with internet cables under the sea which can be used to extract data. Do you know it's possible right?
You can create  completely open source CPU, it won"t be so useful at the end

[aleksej996]

Of course it can, although the fact that AMD chips haven't had any flaws discovered doesn't mean they won't. Who knows what kind of backdoors they might have...
Anyway I'm still going to buy an AMD for my new PC. Who knows how the Intel chips will perform after the fix has been implemented. For now they're claiming performance might go down by 30% which is a disaster. They should offer me a refund!

All modern chips are affected by Spectre vulnerability. Including AMD and even ARM chips on your smartphone.

[Kakmakr]

Ok, so let's say it is true. Why would they make it OpenSource? You cannot hide anything in the protocol, because there are a lot of Peer review being done on the code by people globally.

The backdoor they discovered is running on it's own hidden OS and this has nothing to do with Bitcoin. Most backdoors are hidden in proprietary code in other OS like Microsoft and Cisco routers. <firmware>

Operate within the laws of your country and you will be fine, whatever happens in the future.

[penig]

Surprised there isn't more talk in this forum about these vulnerabilities, or understanding the cause and impact.  One of the vulns affects all Intel with no fix possible.  They'll have redesign chip architecture, test and produce, will take a year or two until a complete fix is in the field.  In the meantime you're vulnerable from nefarious code on your PC reading other code and memory.  Including your passwords and unencrypted data.  If you want to be safe, dig out your old hardware before speculative branch execution.

[cr1776]

...  Too much powers have been given to governments and companies already.
...

You are right, the governments have way too much power.

[This isn't directed at you, Ucy, btw.]:  The funny thing is that many of the people who are upset about the Snowden revelations and saying things like the statement above are the same ones clamoring for government regulation of the internet!  The biggest, most abusive, immoral and evil monopoly on the planet is the monopoly that governments have on controlling people via the use of force.  Every other so-called monopoly is minor compared to the power-hungry people who seek out positions in governments in order to abuse them.

As far as Intel goes, the Management Engine is a large enough backdoor to drive a truck through, these new ones may have been deliberate or may not, but with the ME, it certainly wasn't necessary.

[pixie85]

This is what we should really be scared of. Not that somebody will try to ban Bitcoins or trace our transactions to find our real IDs. The real threat is hardware companies implementing backdoors in our stuff to take control whenever they choose to. What if one day your PC just blows up because it was rigged by the hardware manufacturer to do it on certain day? You can't stop it, you're helpless.

[TommyZ]

I don't know about NSA but IRS is already tracing BTC transactions. I think that if we don't make everything very well encrypted on blockchain fast, it can be our doom instead of salvation.

[haltingprobability]

So much FUD in this thread. I have written up a blog post explaining Meltdown and Spectre for the average person (who has some familiarity with computer terminology).

The NSA has no interest in stealing your Bitcoins. If they are stored on your PC and the NSA wanted to steal them, believe me, they could steal them and the Meltdown and Spectre attacks have nothing to do with how they'd take them. For most people, a hardware wallet is the best way to keep your coins secure. Hardware wallets are not vulnerable to the Meltdown/Spectre class of attacks.

[_merelymetadata]

Well that was reaching deep in the what-if bag. 

[aleksej996]

So much FUD in this thread. I have written up a blog post explaining Meltdown and Spectre for the average person (who has some familiarity with computer terminology).

The NSA has no interest in stealing your Bitcoins. If they are stored on your PC and the NSA wanted to steal them, believe me, they could steal them and the Meltdown and Spectre attacks have nothing to do with how they'd take them. For most people, a hardware wallet is the best way to keep your coins secure. Hardware wallets are not vulnerable to the Meltdown/Spectre class of attacks.

You got any more info on this? What CPUs are hardware wallets using?
Spectre is pretty wide reaching, even some ARM chips are affected, so I am quite curious about architecture hardware wallets use, since there are not many CPU manufactures in the world.