Intel x86s Hide Another CPU That Can Take Over Your Machine -- You Can't Audit it

[Cromulent]

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story...n-take-over-your-machine----you-cant-audit-it

Very interesting and a little worrying. This kind of technology is always ripe for attack by hackers and will leave your system completely wide open to attack no matter anti-virus program you use. It also has a running TCP/IP server on the network interface that can completely bypass your firewall.

 

[Cromulent]

Been tinfoil hat types fretting about this for at least a couple years, hasn't there?

I wouldn't call them tinfoil hat types. This is a serious threat to the safety of a system. It basically means that any code running on the machine can 100% of the time bypass the running operating system such as Windows or Linux.

Imagine if some put a key logger there. You'd never be able to remove it and the only way to fix your computer was to buy a whole new CPU from Intel. Nothing you did in the operating system would reveal the key loggers process to you. It could just read arbitrary data from the running operating system whilst being 100% undetectable.

Most security researchers find that sort of thing rather worrying and it is certainly in the realms of being possible.