Re: [Trisquel-users] "Secret" 3G Intel Chip Gives Snoops Backdoor PC Access

[chris]

It's a good question. If I had to take a shot at what is meant it would be  
that it has a tcp/ip stack in the BIOS. In fact I'm pretty confident of this  
as there are BIOS options to update the BIOS on at least some systems. So  
what is probably happening is that when the technology is activated in the  
BIOS it'll send packets to an IP on the Internet which is run by one of these  
service providers. If the service provider says "it's been reported stolen"  
the motherboard/CPU a signal is sent to the CPU to disable it. If try to pull  
the CPU and install it in another machine it probably won't work. What  
happened was the CPU contained a bit of flash and when the signal was sent to  
the CPU it got recorded. Since flash doesn't require power the CPU doesn't  
work in other machines. I would bet that technically the CPU isn't really  
disabled. It's probably the motherboard that reads something from the CPU and  
if it is set to 'stolen' simply won't boot. That's a wild guess on my part.  
Either way you could do this to any/all the different components on the  
system probably. The CPU and probably motherboard are the only ones that  
probably have this though.

What is most concerning is that there is a significant amount of code nobody  
is allowed to look at. It is suggested (or I'm going to suggest) that these  
features could be used maliciously (without your permission, by say a  
government, or another sophisticated malicious party). Either they could  
intentionally be buggy such that a government agent has the ability to  
remotely enable the technology or a hidden feature that then enables a more  
silent bug. Unlike with an operating system bug that an agent might have used  
in years past you can't simply reload to remove it.