Assuming all proprietary computer hardware is compromised by the NSA, how potentially damaging is that for a security minded user?
Is it possible for a machine running fully free and open source software to send undetectable glow in the dark surveillance data if the user is able to monitor network traffic? From a telemetry perspective, something like IME/PSP wouldn't be able to frequently upload data without it being noticeable, and it wouldn't be able to secretly store data long term right?
What exactly are the most dangerous theoretical privacy/security risks posed be having secretly compromised hardware?
> What exactly are the most dangerous theoretical privacy/security risks posed be having secretly compromised hardware?
Essentially all security is fucked.
Random bits may be predicted, RNGs' behaviour may be predicted, keys may get leaked, so by a targeted attack you may destroy any tech-(math)-conceived crypto that is in common use at least. Like, RSA, TLS, PGP, whatever.
It's still possible to use one-time pads (better with trusted hardware) or some advanced shit like steganography.
>if the user is able to monitor network traffic?
In worst case scenario ALL network devices in common use will be glowed and nobody will be able to detect "special" shit. It simply won't get reported by hardware. It's very risky to pull off and easy to fuck up though, also there are ways to detect signals on the wire without special hardware, like with an oscilloscope or something.
>>4254 >>4255 How much could you mitigate this by using specialized "reasonably secure" open and audited hardware along side the compromised hardware? Like for example a dedicated rng device or a router with open source hardware where performance isn't as important. Could the compromised hardware fuck with encryption in an unidentifiable way if you were able to confirm on the operating system side that the random bits matched the trusted rng source?
If you could trust the hardware and software of the device being used to monitor the network, would it be possible to root out all secret malicious traffic by comparing the data being reported on the compromised machine with the data being collected?
Theoretically it could be very bad but I only think that it would be used in edge cases that threatened the powers that b because any leaking of keys to an massive backdoor would have catastrophic implications for the world as it exists today.
Do you really believe that the successful cryptocurrency robbers took the steps to make sure that IME/PSP couldn't look at them? Maybe. Though they probably for sure took the steps to make sure they weren't (provably) caught.
>>4257 https://www.nitrokey.com/ is pretty cool, open source, open hardware, audited, but in the end there's always some degree of trust, work to minimize it, that is the best you can do.
>>4257 The thing about the era brought upon us by the Diffie-Hellman key exchange (or by whatever related, I dunno exactly) is what it says - you can SECURELY exchange data over a PUBLIC channel.
So, you need one end you can trust (audited software and secure RNG, mostly) and another end. You need BOTH ends. And then it doesn't matter what's in between, unless the crypto model itself is compromised.
Though using the actual open hardware would make me less paranoid about what happens on my machine, because glowers may still try to target you.
>>4260 Also forgot to add, MitM can still fuck you over if you cannot confirm the other end's identity somehow. Now it is achieved via asymmetric cryptography, that's essentially how HTTPS implements all that CA shit. Unless the CA chain is compromised, you're good.
>>4258 The NSA could use that sort of hardware exploit surveilliance more liberally, then use parallel construction tactics to work backwards with the information they find to create a case not based on hardware backdoors so they don't have to reveal the full extent of their abilities. In cases where that's not viable it's possible they know the identities of various criminals that are left free becaues capturing them is not worth revealing how they found that information.
I think it's best to assume an adversary with borderline unlimited resources like a major nation state does/will do anything they're theoretically capable of doing.
>>4260 >>4261 So even with solid crypto compromised hardware can still leak the encrypted information after it's been received and decrypted. I think this brings it back to the issue of making sure you can verify that your outgoing traffic is what your OS is saying it should be. Actually, how much control could malicious hardware have over the software without being detectable? Could a secure OS running on proprietary hardware report glow traffic as something else without me being able to tell? My mental image of something like IME is a seperate black box device that has access to ram and stuff on the hardware end, but how much control does it have over how software runs?
>>4263 If they can avoid getting caught using it then it'd be like a nuke where no one knows the origin. I'm pretty sure if their adversary was very secure they would get caught, making it too risky to use, but I'm trying to understand how much power IME and its equivelents are able to grant to covertly use a nuke.
>>4263 There are a couple of issues I see with much of the IME (parallel machine) discussion that I haven't seen brought up and that is pre-processing/exfiltration and IME drivers.
The parallel machine probably has an interface more like an embedded system so it's not going to have any significant processing power (think SoC) and would mainly be used for exfiltration. The "pipes", so to speak, are well monitored so trying to redirect as much as possible to those pipes, allows for the data to be collected and post processed. The issue with this, is that some really good filters would need to be used to send only "the good stuff" or it would be obvious that large amounts of data is moving asynchronously over the network.
The only way I can think to get around this would be if the machine is turned "on" and there's some sort of extra scheduler layer that allows the parallel machine to divert a certain proportion of CPU workload to the parallel machine processing (working in the shadow of the actual workload). The key is that it adds onto, but doesn't initiate spikes in workload, so activity mirrors that of the OS. If the machine is "off", the processing power is severely crippled, but the subsystem remains (hello ACPI). This might not actually be an issue if it is only interested in monitoring activity instead of providing constant access. To have that, all the systems would need to be powered and running.
Another thing that people seem to be worried about is if the IME can use non-integrated network adapters. I think this is unlikely because IME would need somewhere to put the drivers. If you look at the size of an IME update, it's something like 4MB in size (i suspect this is image size, since it has to be crypto signed), compare that to the network drivers directory in one of the unix-like OS and you'll see it's probably much larger than that. This would support the idea that IME is designed to only work with integrated devices (or a few, out-of-the-box). Storage space is often overlooked in these discussions, storage at the embedded level is very small, the actual HDD/SSD storage can't be used if it's not powered (HDD/SSD firmware probably can be) so most data exfiltration would have to be in real-time and likely have to be pre-filtered/processed.
>>4270 >the actual HDD/SSD storage can't be used if it's not powered (HDD/SSD firmware probably can be)
Feel one of those HDD controller chips when operating. They get hot, which indicates they are using lots of power. If they don't get that hot when switched off, they can't be doing much. For HDDs you get extra assurance that it isn't operating when off, because the motor can't spin.
>>4264 >he issue of making sure you can verify that your outgoing traffic is what your OS is saying it should be.
I think what you're thinking of here is way too sophisticated and that's why it's hard to get it right.
Like, if we have a secure open-hardware open-software trusted router (and it better be powerful), we can have a trusted firewall on that gateway, and now we can drop all incoming and outgoing packages by default, and allow only e.g. some trusted VPN in and out, meaning our traffic would run ONLY (reliably, since it's a trusted gateway) to and from the allowed IP.
Now, I am no security expert, but I don't see much issues with this setup as far as security goes. With your setup though, you would have to account for all possible useful traffic in your network, and that's a tedious and demanding from you as a specialist task. Well, that's not speaking of that you'd have to coordinate that shit over the network too!
>Actually, how much control could malicious hardware have over the software without being detectable?
Worst case scenario - you'd have little to no idea. I mean, hard drives could report their capacity incorrectly (modern hard drives are complex devices with firmwares and all that shite), all network adapters could be glowed, etc etc.
However, it's not likely that most of random-ass consumer hardware is glowed, for multiple reasons.
>Could a secure OS running on proprietary hardware report glow traffic as something else without me being able to tell?
You need to understand that OS doesn't CONTROL devices from inside out, it "drives" them, i.e they're talking over the whatever bus using whatever protocol. If there is some major hardware manufacturer conspiracy going on, mobos, cpus and devices might have some secret glowy shit. It's unlikely it's universal and it's unlikely that it even exists, but it's possible given that there is not that many centers of production of hardware, and monopolies are getting stronger. That's why it became so spooky after Snowden ratting glowers out and that's why open hardware cannot come fast enuff.
>My mental image of something like IME is a seperate black box device that has access to ram and stuff on the hardware end, but how much control does it have over how software runs?
I don't know exact functionality of Intel ME, but I believe it most certainly requires some outside commands. Now, some glowy commands might be inside your system already somewhere, but there are probably too little of them for you to be concerned. Now, if you actually become targeted, glowers might upload more shit to your system and basically hack into your everything, if their system is smart enough.
Now, sorry I cannot shed some light on the exact workings of that, but I'm running paranoia mode here and I wanna make a point: if you care about security, like, really hard, you MUST NOT use glowy Intel/AMD hardware, period. Probably some other hardware either, but THAT is a must. Like, seriously, ME/PSP was bad enough, and now we have Meltdown/Spectre too, which are not vulnerabilities per se, they are a symptom of how FUCKED x86 hardware is, and how many hidden (not really) vulnerabilities are waiting to be disclosed (but exploited first).
>>4271 Correcto. One other thing about SSDs to think about, with a modern ATX power supply, there is one wire to the motherboard power connector that signals to turn it on or off. That probably is hooked up to the main power voltages and there is just one voltage that passes through when the power is "soft off" so the firmware can still be powered for ACPI functions (How does WoLan work?). I don't know what the inside of a SSD looks like, but it would be good to know if the internal storage controller can still read the storage chips if missing the main power. Probably not, but I don't know, something to look into.
>>4277 I did a little research into what the most viable non x86 alternatives are, and it seems like arm and mips are the only architectures that have open source options and reasonable linux support. I had a hard time finding options you can actually buy.
There's lemote chinese laptops with a mips cpu which stallman reportedly used but I don't see a non ebay way to purchase them at this point. There's also novena, made by open source hardware designer bunnie, which uses an iMX6. iMX8 is out but the only example of a consumer aimed product I've heard of with it is the librem 5 which I'm pretty sceptical of. Someone with a deeper knowledge of the open source hardware scene might know of options I wasn't able to find digging around. What option do you reccomend?
My impression was that pre-PSP AMD was a reasonably secure choice for a proper workstation, as AMD didn't seem as affected by spectre/meltdown. I don't even know if there's any open source hardware that's powerful enough to run something like blender/krita, so until like risc-v takes off in a crazy way and people are making open source desktop cpus I'm not sure I have any viable options on that front.
I've considered compartmentalizing all internet usage to one highly secure machine, then running less secure computers for non internet related work separately. The performance required to download the things I need from the web is small enough that I probably could get away with some tiny low end arm processor, but copying large amounts of data from that device might completely overload it. I experimented with this idea on a raspberry pi briefly but I didn't use it long enough to come across any of the more challenging edge cases.
>>4286 Most of my issue is the way Purism markets themselves more so than the librem 5 as a theoretically successful project. Selling marked up laptops with modern intel cpus (IME "neutralized" maybe probably we hope) as a slick just works apple perfect privacy solution just oozes disingenuous to me, and every time I see something new come out of them it always seems like it's selling snake oil to normalfags. Here's a cherry picked example I found scrolling through their website to make fun of them but it does represent the general vibe the company gives off:
>Think equal, build smart, innovate for change
>Is this year’s UN motto for the International Women’s Day. And we find it quite fitting. It suits our own concerns, our own philosophies.
>In Purism, we care about rights. Digital rights concern everybody, touch most people’s lives, and carry a heavy societal weight when it comes to women. In spite of that, the gender gap in Tech is abyssal – and women are almost nowhere to be seen.
That said the librem 5 is maybe the best way to handle a smartphone but it's still a smartphone. It has a proprietary baseband that you can supposedly switch off but you still have to turn it on to do phone shit. I also remember that they were running into binary blob problems but they had this elaborate fucky solution I don't remember, maybe that's all fine
Also, someone on pigchan is recommending VIA x86 C3 processors, don't listen to that glower, A search for "VIA x86 godmode" (or something similar) and you'll see that someone found evidence of being GLOWed.
>>4287 >normalfag snakeoil
Yeah, you are 100% right with that claim, most recent example was the librem.one suite which looks entirely designed to monetize normalfag entry into secure tech.
Imo, Purism are trying too hard to look successful, be mainstream and be idealistic all at the same time which produces uncanny awekward marketing. Anyway I want my family to have phones and computers that dont own them, so as uncanny as purisms faggotry is, they still offer correctly free software on devices that have good prospects, and, be fair, if you want to know how the IME is neutralised its all transparently availabke to you, there is no "just trust us" bullshit, its an open model to everything they do.
>MIPS
Humm... it was open-sourced, but most OS today don't have good support for it. Don't really know about the ones you linked, will read about them.
>>4647 ARM will definitely be better supported. The most recent MIPS SoC designs look to be circa 2012, but it will be interesting to see how the open-sourcing pans out. The only modern places I've seen the arch is in home NAS and consumer routers.
>>4732 >how the open-sourcing pans out.
Not much will happen now that RISC-V is a thing and works better than anything else on the market. OpenSPARC did make some use in OpenPiton, but I don't think OpenMIPS is going to be relevant in the future.
>consumer routers
Yes, this is the area where MIPS works nicely because of low energy consumption. One good recent example is EdgeRouter Lite:
https://www.ui.com/edgemax/edgerouter-lite/
>>5267 It shouldn't because there is no reliable way to turn ME off as far as I know. I will repeat, the solutions just "ask ME to turn itself off", so it's kinda hilarious.
Assuming all proprietary computer hardware is compromised by the NSA, how potentially damaging is that for a security minded user?
Is it possible for a machine running fully free and open source software to send undetectable glow in the dark surveillance data if the user is able to monitor network traffic? From a telemetry perspective, something like IME/PSP wouldn't be able to frequently upload data without it being noticeable, and it wouldn't be able to secretly store data long term right?
What exactly are the most dangerous theoretical privacy/security risks posed be having secretly compromised hardware?