Howdy all,
(This is a few months old, but I haven't seen it discussed here.)
The Librem notebook computers from Purism are reportedly running with an
*entirely quarantined* Intel Management Engine:
Bring out the Champagne! The ME is not only quarantined, it is now
officially neutralized and the Librem remains working beyond the 30
minutes time limit that Intel had put in place!
[…] And so we removed plenty of stuff, but most importantly, we
completely removed the ME kernel as well as the network stack.
<URL:https://puri.sm/posts/neutralizing-intel-management-engine-on-librem-laptops/>
They did this with the work that went into the ‘me_cleaner’ tool
<URL:https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner>.
This is part of Purism's work to port Coreboot to their computers
<URL:https://puri.sm/posts/librem-13-coreboot-report-february-25th-2017/>.
The Intel Management Engine is hostile to user freedom:
[…] there is a growing cryptographic bond between proprietary
non-free signed binaries and the hardware that they run on. This
bond renders it mathematically impossible to give each user control.
Cryptography is superb when in the hands and control of each user,
but it is nasty when it strips the users’ control.
[…] While finishing our first coreboot port, we have successfully
neutralized the Intel ME thanks to the great work of the
“me_cleaner” project, removing its kernel, network stack, and about
92% of the Intel ME binary. There remains a little over 7% before
complete removal.
<URL:https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/>
--
\ “I must say that I find television very educational. The minute |
`\ somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.” |
_o__) —Groucho Marx |
Ben Finney
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