What’s up today? (Part 1)

If I understand correctly, that’s neither particularly new nor really secret. It’s just not talked about much.

I have a Librem 15 laptop for travel, and I’m waiting for the Librem 5 phone, but it’s been delayed again.

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I don’t think these are the same things:

from my link: “So a few researchers from the Russian cybersec firm, PT Security, recently found secret instructions inside Intel CPUs that allow them to disassembler and modify the microcode inside the chips. This is an extremely technically impressive hack that is about as low level as you can get. But it is not inventing a new hack, it is discovering undocumented backdoors that Intel have put into their own chips going back decades.”

From your link: " Recent CPUs from Intel requires a binary called the “Management Engine” (Intel ME, or ME for short). This binary is one of three parts required if a business elects to use Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT)"

Edit: I’ve found an article on this new backdoor:

Edit 2: another link: Black code: Two critical vulnerabilities found in Intel processors | IT Security News

If true that the US gov. has put sanctions on the outfit that discovered this, then I’m guessing they may have pissed off some people at the NSA or some such.

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https://wiki.techxodus.org/en/home

Well if you are the US and you are “lending” to the apartheid state of Israel, then of course…

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A post was split to a new topic: Political cartoons

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Political cartoons

Here’s a twitter thread on indictment and its implications related to the Anon phone honeypot. Lots of juicy detail, seems massive:
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1402100449013125123

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Why these criminals are not using Signal? What is it that makes these other products more desirable?

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The ones that don’t get caught probably do! :slight_smile:

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Creak, creak, creak…

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I haven’t followed those hacks and ransom stories. All I know is cops lie. There was recently a news story in Finland where the authorities were said to have “confiscated” a bunch of Bitcoin. The only small trouble, hardly worth mentioning, was they hadn’t confiscated the private keys…

EDIT: Also, the journalists writing these stories for the big news outlets (or MSM, as some like to call them) often don’t have a clue as to what they write about. It’s not that they’re evil. They are simply asked to write about stuff they don’t understand, and are not given enough time to do research. Of course, the same goes for news involving e.g. medicine.

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More

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Can’t wait to be on surfing securely and safely on the SAFEnet.

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Based on my own experience building SoCs this sounds more like undocumented test instructions vs something malicious. We have similar stuff in our parts that allow you God like powers over the hardware when in certain test modes. These are necessary for doing things like BIST or preloading FIFOs with data to test overflows work properly or calibrating your analog circuitry. These special modes are not accessible during normal operation and need a specific debug setup procedure to enter them, which sounds like the case here. All that said, the spy organizations around the world are pretty smart. If there is a way to compromise a test system, they’ll probably find it, and they certainly won’t tell anyone about it.

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I’m pretty sure it is not worth the repercussions.

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Depends on the individual. God bless these people either way.

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“Please do not mess with our pensions as a smack in the puss may offend” en francais

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If your in the UK and don’t want your medical data up for sale, this is worth a look. Pretty simple to stop it happening by withdrawing consent.

https://medconfidential.org/

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