intel vPro processor backdoor to make securing bitcoin impossable?

[Anon136]

i know what you are thinking and this is not a politics and society thread. atleast not yet. right now it is a technical discussion topic.

http://www.infowars.com/91497/

In a promotional video for the technology, Intel brags that the chips actually offer enhanced security because they don’t require computers to be “powered on” and allow problems to be fixed remotely. The promo also highlights the ability for an administrator to shut down PCs remotely “even if the PC is not connected to the network,” as well as the ability to bypass hard drive encryption...

"Core vPro processors contain a second physical processor embedded within the main processor which has it’s own operating system embedded on the chip itself,” writes Jim Stone. “As long as the power supply is available and in working condition, it can be woken up by the Core vPro processor, which runs on the system’s phantom power and is able to quietly turn individual hardware components on and access anything on them.”

so my question is this, if we take everything that is written in this article for granted, would it even be technically possible to secure ones bitcoins on a computer with one of these vPro processors?

[pedrog]

Isn't that one of Alex Jones's websites?

[Anon136]

Isn't that one of Alex Jones's websites?

yes

[dddbtc]

I had an HP Elitebook 2670p with a core i5 vPro processor, Trusted Platform Computing Module Chip, and Intel AntiTheft.  I sold it very quickly because I always thought my old boss had some kind of backdoor in haha.

Don't keep your bitcoins on a corporate/government computer.

There's your answer.  They're really the only type of computer in which you will encounter these kinds of things.

[pedrog]

Isn't that one of Alex Jones's websites?

yes

I've watched a lot of his DVDs he seems schizophrenic, but he makes a good living spreading FUD and misinformation...

[Anon136]

Isn't that one of Alex Jones's websites?

yes

I've watched a lot of his DVDs he seems schizophrenic, but he makes a good living spreading FUD and misinformation...

Of course plenty of conspiracy theories are real and plenty are not. I dont think Alex puts a whole lot of effort into fact checking to filter out fact from fiction. He kind of just acts on the assumption that they are all true. I doubt this is due to schizophrenia however, more likely its just whats most profitable for him in his particular market niche.

[markm]

Ever since reading The Cold Cash War many years ago I've tended to figure this kind of stuff was coming. That they actually talk about it outside of classified documents nowadays might mean its been around a lot longer than you might think and might be in a lot of chips you might not expect stuff like that to be in...

-MarkM-

[Anon136]

Ever since reading The Cold Cash War many years ago I've tended to figure this kind of stuff was coming. That they actually talk about it outside of classified documents nowadays might mean its been around a lot longer than you might think and might be in a lot of chips you might not expect stuff like that to be in...

-MarkM-

if thats true this could be very very bad for bitcoin. maybe its time to start thinking about and talking about open source hardware, or what ever is the nearest thing to it?

[Anon136]

Ever since reading The Cold Cash War many years ago I've tended to figure this kind of stuff was coming. That they actually talk about it outside of classified documents nowadays might mean its been around a lot longer than you might think and might be in a lot of chips you might not expect stuff like that to be in...

-MarkM-

if thats true this could be very very bad for bitcoin. maybe its time to start thinking about and talking about open source hardware, or what ever is the nearest thing to it?

The real issue is Intel's SGX. Software Guard Extensions basically means you don't have control over your computer anymore. It means that unless you reverse-engineer the processor itself, you can make malware that is impossible to analyze -- a dream for an entity like the NSA. Additionally, Intel could easily be forced to hand over the private keys used by SGX, allowing the NSA to bypass it. Even if the processor was entirely open source, and you verified that an off-the-shelf processor exactly matched the open source specification transistor for transistor, you STILL wouldn't be able to prove Intel backdoored SGX, because all it takes is knowledge of the private key.

ok but with hardware audits we could verify that intel hadn't put SGX or anything analogous to it in the processor, correct?

or phrased differently, is it possible for someone knowledgeable in the the field to look in there with a microscope and confirm that intel had not included any sort of hardware that could in theory be backdoored?

[randomcloud]

Maybe if they spent years and went through it transistor by transistor, then yeah, someone could verify that the processor doesn't have an intentional backdoor. But the thing is, they're pushing SGX on consumers by saying that it's for their security. In a few years, you might not be able to get a reasonably new processor without it.

So there's no way some open-source manufacturer couldn't design their own processor or pay off some other company to do so to bypass the government spying?

How the hell could we possibly stand a chance against the U.S. government then?  

[Anon136]

Ok but if it was open source you wouldn't necessarily need to go through transistor by transistor. The specs would be published so you could use software to analyze the specs to see whether or not, if the specifications were accurate, there would be hardware back doors. Obviously software wouldn't catch everything so the wider community could audit the specs in more detail not relying on any individual to do all the work.

then one or a couple of individuals would only need to take a wide enough sampling of random sections of the processor to see if they conformed to the specs. so like for example if you checked the configuration of every 1000th transistor and its neighbors with a random distribution to see if it conformed to the specs. it would be analogous to hashing in the software world. of course there would be room for error with this method that doesn't exist with hashing but you could still have some relative degree of certainty that, after the hardware audit, the hardware conformed to the provided specs.

sorry if that made no sense 

[pedrog]

Here's a very topic relevant talk by Cory Doctorow:

The Coming Civil War over General-purpose Computing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI

[Realpra]

This is worrisome, but we could still do BTC signatures on custom hardware entirely and not rely on normal computers.

Maybe there's a future in mini-computer-banks that can print small slips of addr/key pairs, entirely offline, secure and open source hardware to software.

The Bitcoin nodes could still run on normal computers as everything there is public anyway.

[grue]

or you can, you know... use an AMD processor

[Anon136]

or you can, you know... use an AMD processor

oh yea amd could be doing all this crap also but atleast they arnt bragging about it publicly. the next processor i buy will definitely be an amd.

[msc]

It's not a secret chip, and it's not for spying.  It's for remote administration and theft recovery.  If you don't like it, just disable it, wrap it in tin foil, or don't buy it in the first place.

[pedrog]

It's not a secret chip, and it's not for spying.  It's for remote administration and theft recovery.  If you don't like it, just disable it, wrap it in tin foil, or don't buy it in the first place.

I'm also a little skeptic about its capabilities, haven't read a lot I confess, but the "even when the computer is off"...

What kind of connectivity does it needs? What if I'm in the middle of the desert?

I think they may be exaggerating, that seems really expensive tech, and in their market they need to be cheap...

[Meizirkki]

Don't worry. If Intel has a backdoor open to the west, China will come up with a CPU manufacturer of their own. We will at least have the freedom of choise.

[Puppet]

Forget alex jones, but vpro is very real and potentially the mother of all rootkits. Undetectable by software, impossible to turn off.  The Vpro controller has direct access to your hdd, keyboard, ram, and an attacker can indirectly gain access to all the rest, like camera and microphone. The possibilities are very scary.

[pedrog]

Forget alex jones, but vpro is very real and potentially the mother of all rootkits. Undetectable by software, impossible to turn off.  The Vpro controller has direct access to your hdd, keyboard, ram, and an attacker can indirectly gain access to all the rest, like camera and microphone. The possibilities are very scary.

But was the R&D financed by NSA or something like that, or are they spending millions for easy remote tech support?