Hi,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Raja Guha" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: A technical but OT question to the experts
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 23:59:09 +0530
> A close and reliable friend had casually commented
> several years ago that a good friend of his had
> worked on a secret project in a small country in he
> Middle East on "security features" in the Intel 486
> chip.
May not have been the plain vanilla 80486. IIRC, the
80486 is also the most commonly used chip for military
grade h/w, especially in embedded C & C (Command and
Control) systems, particularly in single-board
configs.
> I feel that this could perhaps mean some sort of
> hole into the system at the sub-OS level.
The custom tweaking usually goes into the BIOS and the
OS being used, usually some sort of RTOS.
> This hypothesis makes sense to me on a political
> level. If a police agency in the US were determined
> to snoop on all PC based communications they would
> get the co-operation of major corps such as Intel,
> and it also makes sense that the work would be done
> outside the US to be able to provide them w/
> "plausable deniability".
The civil libertarians and pro-Privacy folks in the US
have been fairly vociferous in the past to allow the
folks at Capitol Hill get comfy with such ideas. I'm
certainly no expert on US politics, but such a major
move would probably have to have the backing of the
majority of the Congress. Most of such attempts in
past have been shutdown due to public outrage and by
the Supreme Court based on the guiding principle of
the First Amendment.
Why go far.. remember the commotion over the PIII CPU
Serial ID thingie.... intel had to scrap the idea.
After all, in US, a criminal, with incremenating
forensic evidence that proves his guilt beyond doubt,
can walk free if the same evidence was collected from
his place without issue of proper warrants... he may
be guilty as hell but you can't indict him... ;-)
> Such a "hole" would of course need to co-operate w/
> whatever IO device is being used on the system -
> ethernet or modem card - for it to be able to
> transmit info to a remote device.
Even today only 30% of the US homes are said to have
Internet connections. Which means that the rest use
comps in standalone configs. Nothing prevents people
from either not going online or working only over
highly secured channels.In fact more n/w-ed you are,
better the chances of evading the eavesdroppers, e.g.
there are a lot of US sites which cater to US-only
customers. These sites check the Source IP of the
packets, but nothing prevents a person from remotely
logging into an US server, and accessing the US site
from there....
> Now the question is - Is such a "hole" technically
feasable?
Theoritically a whole lot of things are possible, but
the sheer economics and quest for profit will
ultimately defeat such an endeavor. To do what you
suggest at individual chip level, would involve
substantial changes to the chips' design and fab
process. Intel is ultimately answerable to its
shareholders not the US government. Governments hardly
rule these days on anything... the bottomline does.
> I personnally feel that the resources of the police
> agencies are so vast that they can always read
> anything they want to - the anti-encryption laws,
> the Carnivore etc. are mere smoke screens or simply
> means of facilitating what they can already do. I
> do not think that whatever software encryption
> etc. are available to us are any barrier to them at
> all.
Read up on the aborted Clipper Chip program ...
http://www.epic.org/crypto/clipper/. If it wasn't
difficult, the fat-a**es on the Hill and at Langley
wouldn't be hankering for backdoors.... At the
moment, the lynching mob mentality has taken over, and
the US administration seems to be doing everything to
keep it fanning. But this cannot go on forever. The US
domestic & foreign policy has been governed by the
search for public support on the issues at hand, since
they have to put up with the farce of being a
consensual democratic society. This by itself should
be the largest impediment to the US govt. getting away
with such measures.
A subversive and corrupt government can well turn the
power of the state against the people to silence or
surreptiously monitor the voices of dissent. The funny
thing is that the US Constitution, along with their
Declaration of Independence document have enough
material which are basically akin to dual-purpose
technology. It is perhaps the longest running farcical
comedy in the human history. They both makes for
entertaining reading provided you have the time and
patience.
> Imagine - these people had been able to wire the
> entire Pacific and Atlantic w/ microphones about 1
> mile apart (to listen for submarines) - and this was
> in the '60s!
They had the Cold War to justify the excesses, their
present threats however great, IMHO are nothing
compared to the compulsions of the Cold War. Besides,
they have more spy satellites than any other nation,
but still were caught with their pants down when India
created Pokhran II or the plane crashed into Pentagon,
so there... ;-)
--indra.
__________________________________________________
Terrorist Attacks on U.S. - How can you help?
Donate cash, emergency relief information
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US/Emergency_Information/
--
To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body
"unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line.
FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/help/faq_list.html
