Minix unknowingly running on Librem Laptops?

Does the disabling of Intel Management engine disable the Ring -3 core too?

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I think the most interesting takeaway from this article is that, possibly for the only time in history, Google and Purism are fighting on the same side here. And yes, we can only hope that at least one (Intel or AMD) take the opportunity and release backdoor-less CPUs.

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Wonder if there’s anything of value to be taken from Google’s NERF at the moment? Because it sounds like they are a bit behind Purism.

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Just in case somebody else tried to google “google nerf” and got a dozen of nerf gun videos: try “google nerf firmware” or just have a look here or watch this talk.

It doesn’t look to me as them being behind Purism, they are using the same approach (me_cleaner) but instead of just removing stuff they try to replace it with FOSS components. (only got a German source for that) That is amazing :slight_smile:

[EDIT:] Actually, Purism is mentioned at the end of that talk.

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ME seems to die quickly. Now they have a debug interface for it.

The German article I found this in also claims that the recently discovered ME kill bit (which Purism is now using to disable the ME) had been added by the request of the NSA. Now that’s interesting :slight_smile: But of course the NSA doesn’t like potential backdoors in their computers :smiley:

The article also mentions Purism and links to an article of the print magazine which had a review of the Librem 15 (German) recently.

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Pardon my French but Jesus fuck, this kinda thing makes me wonder if we can just completely abandon Intel.

Purism, you might wanna look into seriously doing just that. I know you’ve done a lot of work on getting rid of the ME and everything already, but it looks like Intel really just cannot be trusted as a company.

Unless - is this MINIX the Management Engine itself? I’m not versed in this topic but I read the article as if this MINIX unveiling is a separate thing from the Management Engine.

But I suppose perhaps the ME is actually a distro of MINIX.

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Minix is the OS that powers the management engine. Purisms work to wipe the ME clean will also wipe Minix clean. Also if you think this is bad, consider that AMD processors have a mechanism similar to ME called PSP and we know even less about it.

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