Purism Now Shipping Their Laptops With Intel ME Disabled

Purism has announced today all laptops to be shipping from their company will now have the Intel Management Engine (ME) disabled.

Thanks to work done by security researches in recent years for finding ways to disable ME, especially in light of recent security vulnerabilities, Purism's Coreboot-equipped laptops are now shipping with ME disabled out-of-the-box. Those already with a Librem laptop are able to apply a firmware update to also disable it.

Purism confirmed the ME disablement today as well as providing more on their route for disabling ME.

They also said they will begin working towards reverse-engineering the firmware support package (FSP) next as it's a binary blob still needed for Coreboot support with recent Intel hardware. It will be interesting to see if Purism can keep this up with their future systems when moving towards newer generations of Intel hardware or if they will keep to Skylake-class systems until future generations are fully freed.