No way that Intel sat on this for years until they needed it for PR.

This post was sponsored by INTEL™️

/jk

Funny. No. This is not remotely comparable to CPU's crashing because of a lack of R&D and half ass quarter earnings profiteering culture's lack of intelligent long term thinking. It is not remote accessible. This is just corporate psyops in an attempt to coverup their overwhelming neo feudal incompetence. If they had the staff and invested reasonably, the problems wouldn't happen. Paint the world in shit to continue the claim that yours does not stink. Only idiots buy into that.

Now onto some better news. Despite being potentially catastrophic, this issue is unlikely to impact regular people. That’s because in order to make full use of the flaw, hackers would already need deep access to an AMD-based PC or server. That’s a lot of work for a random home PC, phew, but could spell trouble for corporations or other large entities.

Hmm.

It does mean that any secondhand computer or CPU (or even CPU from a sketchy source) could be compromised prior to being physically sold.

I have worried a bit before about the physical supply chain. Consider this case, earlier in the year, about someone selling counterfeit Cisco hardware (not intending to compromise computers, just make a buck):

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-massive-scheme-traffic-fraudulent-and-counterfeit-cisco-networking-equipment

“Aksoy sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of counterfeit computer networking equipment that ended up in U.S. hospitals, schools, and highly sensitive military and other governmental systems, including platforms supporting sophisticated U.S. fighter jets and military aircraft,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Criminals who flood the supply chain with low-quality networking equipment from China and Hong Kong harm U.S. businesses, pose serious health and safety risks, and compromise national security. This case—one of the largest counterfeit trademark cases ever prosecuted in the United States—demonstrates the Criminal Division’s commitment and capacity to prosecute the most complex counterfeiting schemes and bring the perpetrators to justice.”

“Through an elaborate, years-long scheme, Aksoy created and ran one of the largest counterfeit-trafficking operations ever,” said Attorney for the United States Vikas Khanna for the District of New Jersey. “His operation introduced tens of thousands of counterfeit and low-quality devices trafficked from China into the U.S. supply chain, jeopardizing both private-sector and public-sector users, including highly sensitive U.S. military applications like the support platforms of U.S. fighter jets and other military aircraft. Yesterday’s sentence, made possible by the investigation and prosecution of this office and our department and agency partners, now brings Aksoy to justice and holds him accountable for the breathtaking scale of his operation.” 

According to court documents and statements made in court, Aksoy ran at least 19 companies formed in New Jersey and Florida, as well as approximately 15 Amazon storefronts and at least 10 eBay storefronts (collectively, the Pro Network Entities). The Pro Network Entities imported from suppliers in China and Hong Kong tens of thousands of low-quality, modified computer networking devices with counterfeit Cisco labels, stickers, boxes, documentation, and packaging, all bearing counterfeit trademarks registered and owned by Cisco that made the goods falsely appear to be new, genuine, and high-quality devices manufactured and authorized by Cisco. The devices had an estimated total retail value of hundreds of millions of dollars. The Pro Network Entities generated over $100 million in revenue from the scheme, and Aksoy personally received millions of dollars.

I remember that that hardware made it into even Cisco's own authorized partners' inventory.

And that's not something that's gonna be far up in the supply chain. People don't build Cisco hardware into a lot of other products.

So you gotta wonder what can happen if someone has a good way to undetectably compromise CPUs and insert them into the supply chain.

I was troubled by how many times this article used the word "deep". Also, what was the bit about the hack likely surviving a reinstall of the OS? Why in the world wouldn't it if it's a cpu bios firmware hack?

I'll bet the Intel management engine is just as "vulnerable". The only context this is likely a concern is large scale corpo deployments, without verified supply chains to the source. Love how the security researcher handwaves that there's "plenty of existing exploits" that can be used to install the exploit into the SMM, without giving any suggestions of how.

Except the AMD exploit requires ring 0 access and is almost irrelevant to most users, whereas the Intel issues are physically destroying people's computers. The scale of the issues are utterly incomparable.

I'm much more angry with whatever dipshit at AMD decided to revoke permission for ZLUDA, and that they haven't yet been fired.

Despite being potentially catastrophic, this issue is unlikely to impact regular people. That’s because in order to make full use of the flaw, hackers would already need deep access to an AMD-based PC or server.

Physical access is root access, always has been

Sinkclose

Impacted systems: https://www.amd.com/en/resources/product-security/bulletin/amd-sb-7014.html

Original presentation details. https://ioactive.com/event/def-con-talk-amd-sinkclose-universal-ring-2-privilege-escalation/

This is a big f****** deal. If you get kernel access to a system, which is not uncommon, you can install a persistent back door that subverts the rest of the system forever. That's huge. It does not require physical access, requires kernel access.. different things

Steam games that ask for admin privileges, a USB stick that boots, normal virus infection that can never be uninstalled,. persistent RAT....

What the heck? Then get to planning you dicks?

It was really just a matter of time before someone figured a way to exploit those stupid deep management engines. It was so predictable.

And each intel chip runs a minix system behind the scenes that I'm sure someone will soon find a way to play with if it's not already compromised.