Hi Nico, You are right, my choice of words has been far from ideal. I apologize for that. However, to be confident that Intel ME is a backdoor (personal opinion) - one does not have to be its' creator. I think there are enough documents describing its' functionality and enough evidence gathered by the independent security researchers about the suspicious activities of this hardware module. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck?
There are no technical differences between the 'backdoor', and 'frontdoor'. Like a 'conspiracy theorist', 'frontdoor' is a term coming from the american 3-letter-agencies. 'Frontdoor' is their term for a 'backdoor' to which only they (currently) have an access. This article summarizes it well: https://www.justsecurity.org/16503/security-front-doors-vs-back-doors-distinction-difference/ . 'Backdoor' term has a negative reputation, so they would like to push this 'frontdoor' term forward. Mike On Tue, Aug 28, 2018 at 9:20 PM Nico Huber <nic...@gmx.de> wrote: > > Hi Mike, > > you can be as much biased as you want, and you can express that here. I > have no trouble with that. What I don't like is your choice of words. > For instance with "Undoubtedly, Intel ME is a backdoor," you imply to > know everybody's opinion on the matter. Because I don't think you are > the creator himself, this draws a big WTF? into my brain. > > You can say "In my opinion, Intel ME is a backdoor, ..." but you can't > say it's undoubted. I don't only doubt that, IMHO, it is a frontdoor. > > You also claim that things are well studied which are not. A replay of > a proprietary program might be open-source technically, but it doesn't > mean that anybody has a clue how it works. > > So please, if you want to express your *personal* opinion or "knowledge" > please always state so. And don't make it look like the general under- > standing (especially not when experts disagree). > > Nico -- coreboot mailing list: coreboot@coreboot.org https://mail.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot
