this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
262 points (92.5% liked)
Technology
61456 readers
5000 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
IntelME is an embedded Microcontroller in the Intel Chipset (in the south-bridge chip) which depending on variations in generation, has a multitude of different features such as Active Management Technology used in IT department, clock controls and a few more things.
Because it is closed source there are security concerns about possible vulnerabilities in it which could possibly be exploited, as well as several conspiracy theories about it. Due to that hobbyists as well as certain OEMs have found out ways to disable it in attempt to mitigate these issues.
For more detailed information on it I would highly recommend this video by CCC on the subject, it covers what IntelME does and how it was able to be disabled.
34C3 - Intel ME: Myths and reality (Youtube)
34C3 - Intel ME: Myths and reality (media.ccc.de)
AMT is a great way to get a passworded VNC session into the terminal.
Well provided your OEM hasn't disabled it, on most of the computers I checked with IntelMEtool (the ones new enough to have IntelME) I found that AMT shows up as disabled on most of them, except for a few.