AMD To Put An ARM Core On Future Fusion APUs

[droidhacker]

all naive people without "rampant paranoia" are using "Windows" with the result that windows do have the most Viruses and Trojans and stuff like that.

why should intelligence people without nativity accept a MASTER-SPY-TOOL AGAINST YOUR SELF in there own hardware?

its the same with FLAME trojan with official microsoft signature if UEFI-Secureboot for linux do have a microsoft key microsoft just give away the KEY to the CIA and the CIA write FLAME2.0 to attack your linux system over the MASTER-KEY in UEFI-Secureboot!

and i'm "german" this means the CIA are allowed to attack ME just because i'm not US-Citizen!


only naive stupid people sell there soul to he devil and then they think they come to heaven instead of hell.

Dude, that is pure nonsense.
Someone having the UEFI boot key doesn't make the system any less secure than it is RIGHT NOW without ANY keys.
Even if the CIA got their hands on the MS key, and for that matter, even if the key got leaked out to the public, it wouldn't be of any use since what the key is protecting is just MS's ability to block competition!

[blackiwid]

is just MS's ability to block competition!

Ohh nice its only the monopolist (nearly) that blocks his competition and btw, if he suceeds everyone have to use a windows pc and uih there is no sourcecode so they can put in their os what they want total surveilance and other stuff like that, ok then I am not worried anymore.

[0xBADCODE]

So we would have a backdoor running untrusted code...

"more secure computing experiences"

Whoa, what a double standards! Unless they would state than it's possible to boot your own, completely open-sourced firmware on this ARM CPU, it have to be considered as just some kind of backdoor and/or anti-user countermeasure. And I seriously doubt they will allow user to enter secured ARM mode with his code.

So basically you're forced to trust some unknown binary firmware just because... because has AMD decided so.

Feel free to trust your security to anyone who forces you to do so.
But when doing so, remember: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

[0xBADCODE]

Dude, that is pure nonsense.
Someone having the UEFI boot key doesn't make the system any less secure than it is RIGHT NOW without ANY keys.
Even if the CIA got their hands on the MS key, and for that matter, even if the key got leaked out to the public, it wouldn't be of any use since what the key is protecting is just MS's ability to block competition!

Well, let's evaluate abusive ways to use technologies ("if anything bad could happen, it would happen").

1) In UEFI it's possible that some drivers/services would run together with OS. If they're binary-only there is no good way to check if they don't have undesired "(mis)features". Bios has been better in this regard as all 32/64 bit OSes simply disregard it and do not use it to deal with hardware. So it mostly can't have control most of time. Sure, there are some nasty tricks like "ring -1" aka SMM-mode, but it's hard to (ab)use in arbitrary way for most attackers (though not completely impossible) and for example Linux goes Kernel Panic if SMM handler takes too long. But UEFI is worse than that in this regard. It can do all this the same abusive ways + can run potentially unwanted drivers/services together with OS. As an extra bonus it will restrict us with "secure" boot where you're forced to "trust" to someone by hardware. I have to admit that if pushing this approach a bit further, the best hardware to enforce trust is a gun. It's far more convincing than any backdoored code/hardware.

2) Intel now haves their very own small secondary CPU in recent chip sets. It's required for vPro/AMT, to control FAN speeds and do advanced power management in notebooks, etc. It's management firmware is binary-only. CPU instruction set is not documented. It's mentioned in datasheets but no exact details given for this part of chipset, unlike it's x86 counterpart. It haves network access through chipset's ethernet connection even when main CPU is completely powered off. You also can't firewall this little cpu for same reasons. And this small CPU could mess with memory of main CPU if desired. It also what performs wake on lan and remote management on AMT/vPro machines. So it can do much more than that - in principle, you can overtake remote computer which is "looks like switched off". And who knows what lurks in firmware internals? Are there any valid reasons to trust to this code? It would not even shut down if you disable it in bios setup. Because at least some very basic things like fan speed controls are also handled by this CPU. So it just tells as if it switched off. But in fact it is not. It only shut downs official part of remote management "API", etc. But you can't easily check if there is any unwanted features left. So if someone would want to place a backdoor - it's a really nice place. This CPU firmware stored in same BIOS IC as all other BIOS parts but chipset ensures this code is unavailable to x86 CPU. So you can't even detect backdoor from x86 CPU, should be there any. So you would have quite hard times when just trying to learn "what this thing really does".

3) Now AMD comes to this road. And I guess their approach will be just as nasty and potentially troublemaking. I seriously doubt this ARM core would run open firmware which you can actually check for absence of unwanted misfeatures. I seriously doubt they will allow user to enter secured ARM mode and check which code is actually executed here. So it would be nice place to store backdoors and unwanted misfeatures once more.

Btw, DRM restrictions are kind of backdoor/unwanted misfeatures too. In absolutely best case it does nothing. If you're less lucky, it f...s you up.

[0xBADCODE]

its the security of the companies against the customers!
i think about buying a loongson 3B 16 core system:

Does it haves opensource boot loader and lacks any unwanted firmwares with things like backdoors and misfeatures like DRM restrictions? I'm getting seriously tired of those trojan-makers who want to make yet another locked-down xbox from PCs.

[0xBADCODE]

i can not answer you this question but its a nativ mibs 64bit cpu design for "Linux" use only.
you can only use windows software or x86-i386 code if you use QEMU in linux to emulate i386 hardware and windows software..

You see, "Linux use only" does not exactly warrants that hardware isn't bastardized against it's owner. For example have you ever heard "Tivoization" word? That's when you buy some piece of shi^W hardware and then it dares to disobey you and unwilling to run your code at all unless it's signed by vendor. Should I admit this "security" feature means nothing good for user at all and rather f...s users up? Same goes for UEFI's "secure" boot. Or some Motorola with locked down boot loader. Sure, it runs linux. But you can't even easily replace outdated and bugged kernel .... because boot loader just unwilling to run your unsigned code and you can't sign it yourself. So you don't decide whom you trust.

Just as Lafkon guys warned us a while ago in their epic movie about all that.

And after all, you see, recent "Flamer" electronic warfare tool (malware) used for industrial espionage on Iran, Israeli and other countries has been properly digially signed by MS certificate. So either MS have officially entered digital warfare state and going to cause troubles via signing bad things or they're just unable to securely manage their certificates. Both outcomes mean that I don't want to have guys like that as "root of trust".

[curaga]

Wasn't RMS using a loongson laptop? That would bode well for the future 16-core one

[curaga]

At least the laptop he uses is fully free, including bios and various firmware (wifi etc).

[smitty3268]

And after all, you see, recent "Flamer" electronic warfare tool (malware) used for industrial espionage on Iran, Israeli and other countries has been properly digially signed by MS certificate. So either MS have officially entered digital warfare state and going to cause troubles via signing bad things or they're just unable to securely manage their certificates. Both outcomes mean that I don't want to have guys like that as "root of trust".

You should learn more about this, because it's actually pretty interesting.

It comes down to the fact that MS was using an MD5 certificate somewhere, and that encryption method has proven to be insecure.

Remember a few years back when some researchers showed they cracked MD5 with an array of 200 PS3's? The Flame authors did the same thing, but using their own attack method. And it was actually before that researcher publicized that it was possible.

When that came out, pretty much everyone abandoned MD5 as insecure, but somehow MS kept using it in a few places that got overlooked.

[Fenrin]

Surely by now _someone_ would have made such bulldozer-optimized software? I haven't seen any.

Yes there is indeed, for example: LS-DYNA
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