Group: Hardware/Restrictions/anti-freedom/Intel Management Engine

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(→‎Why there is no replacement for it yet: update me replacements)
(→‎Why there is no replacement for it yet: remove the section about replacing the ME as it's more interesting to move it in the research attempts)
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== Why there is no replacement for it yet ==
 
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Replacing the ME firmware is not that easy and would be a lot of work because:
 
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* The Management Engine bootrom checks the firmware signature. While it's possible to bypass that, for instance by using DCI, it would require a lot of work to get a fully free system.
 
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* On recent Intel computers, the Management Engine is required to boot the computer.
 
  
 
== Reducing harm without fixing the issue ==
 
== Reducing harm without fixing the issue ==

Revision as of 21:44, 26 February 2020

TODO

This article has been imported from the old Coreboot wiki page on the Management Engine.

  • Clean it up

Uses of the Management Engine

The Intel Management Engine (abbreviated "ME") is a CPU which:

  • permits out of band management of the computer. See the Wikipedia AMT article for example use cases.
  • on recent versions:
    • initializes the hardware, before the boot firmware(BIOS/EFI/UEFI/Coreboot/etc...).
    • DRM
    • TPM
    • Other applications

Freedom and security issues

  • The code that is running inside the management engine is proprietary and signed. Therefore, it cannot easily be audited, tested, or replaced, except by those people with access to the relevant private keys, i.e. a handful of Intel staff (and possibly government agents).
  • The ME has access to a lot of things, see "physical capabilities" column below for more details.
  • In addition to obvious attack vectors (the ME could be used by an adversary to spy on the PC user, tamper with their documents, etc), it could also potentially be used to alter the contents of the motherboard's BIOS flash chip, thereby polluting Coreboot builds based upon extracting the contents of that flash chip.

Versions

ME firmware version Microarchitecture Chipset AMT versions ME firmware versions Applications Location Required modules Bit
N/A (ME predecessor) ICH7 1.0
  • AMT
 82573E Gigabit Ethernet Controller[1] None ?
Q963[1] 2.0
  • AMT
Q965[1] 2.0 3.0[2]
  • AMT
  • No TPM
1st Gen Core:[3]
  • Nehalem?
  • Other?
  • AltMeDisable[5]
Nehalem[6] Q57 6.0[1] 6.0, 6.1 [7]
2nd Gen Core[3]
3rd Gen Core[3]
4th Gen Core[3]
5th Gen Core:[3]
  • Broadwell
  • Other?
Skylake
  • RBE
  • BUP
  • KERNEL
  • SYSLIB[4]
6th Gen Core[3]
7th Gen Core[3]

Where

Board Firmware Microarchitecture ME location and physical capabilities ME restrictions
Lenovo X60/X60s/X60T None. [8] I945 + ICH7
  • Inside the ethernet controller, disabled: no Ethernet controller fimrware. [8]
  • Disabled: No Ethernet controller fimrware. [8]
Lenovo T60
Lenovo x200 Me firmware with AMT and other modules GM45/GS45

The ME is inside the PCH, it:

  • Has access to the computer's memory/RAM
  • Controls the computer's original networking adapters
  • Signed firmware
  • The ME can be disabled (no Firmware is run by it).
Lenovo x201 Me firmware with AMT and other modules Nehalem
  • Signed firmware
  • If ME firmware is absent, the computer freezes about 30min after boot.
Packard Bell EasyNote LM85 (MS2290) ?
  • Signed firmware
Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook me.bin Sandy Bridge
  • Signed firmware
Samsung Series 3 Chromebox me.bin
Lenovo t520 Me firmware with AMT and other modules
Google/HP Pavilion Chromebook 14 me.bin Ivy Bridge
  • Signed firmware
Google Chromebook Pixel me.bin
Google/Acer C7 Chromebook me.bin
Google/Lenovo Thinkpad X131e Chromebook me.bin
Lenovo t530 Me firmware with AMT and other modules
Lenovo x230 Me firmware with AMT and other modules
Kotron KTQM77/mITX ?
Google/Acer C720 Chromebook ? Haswell
  • Signed firmware
Google/HP Chromebook 14 ?

Reducing harm without fixing the issue

  • There are several versions of the Management Engine OS for a given Management Engine hardware. Smaller versions can contain less code.
  • me_cleaner can remove some of the Management Engine OS code.

However none of the above fixes the fact that nonfree code runs on hardware that has too many capability and that is meant to remove users control of their computer.

Research on removing the Management Engine OS

  • There are some interesting bug reports in the me_cleaner bug tracker. Some people have removed the Management Engine OS on computers with chipsets more recent than GM45, but Coreboot hasn't been ported yet on such computers.
  • There is a report of removing the Management Engine OS for an asus P55 Extreme, again Coreboot hasn't been ported yet to the computer.

To be added to Libreboot a computer would need at least:

  • To be supported in Coreboot or other boot software (u-boot, etc)
  • To be usable without nonfree software, like the CPU microcode

Upstream sustainability

Coreboot is removing many boards from new revisions of Coreboot.

Boards are typically removed because they weren't converted in time to new frameworks.

The issue is that one needs to already be involved in Coreboot development and follow very closely the mailing list, and what is happening to catch that early enough.

You could have less than one month to convert the code, if you don't catch it in time, especially because you are not contacted. It's up to you to follow what hapening upstream.

While this lower the maintenance burden, as the maintainers don't need to care about converting the older code to the new frameworks, we also need to take it into account when deciding which computers to focus work on.

Here's what I know on that so far:

  • The MAINTAINERS file has maintainers for specific computers. If a computer is maintained we probably have good enough assurance that it'll stick around.
  • It's possible to pay some companies to do the maintenance work, but I don't have much information on that yet.

Why does that matters

While Coreboot itself is not FSDG compliant and expect users to download and use nonfree software for being able to use it on many computers, it's still interesting to have code maintained there.

This then enables FSDG compliant Coreboot distributions like Libreboot or the deblobed versions of Coreboot published as part of the RYF initiative, to still be able to benefit from new developments and bugfixes upstream.

It also enables to build virtuous circles between non-FSDG compliant projects like Coreboot and downstream projects, where code can be maintained by the upstream project, even if the computers can't meet the RYF certification.

The x86 RYF laptops were made possible thanks to that kind of relationship: The fully free GPU initialization code was made by Ron Minnich for the Chromebook Pixel, which is a computer that is fatally flawed as it cannot even boot with free software as it requires a nonfree Management Engine firmware to boot. This code was then reused to get a fully free GPU initialization in Coreboot for the Thinkpad X60. Coreboot (once deblobbed) was then used to create Libreboot and make the first RYF laptops certified.

As compilers evolve, it's also important to still be able to build the source code without having to build very old compilers.

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.01.11.21.3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_AMT_versions
  2. ↑ https://ark.intel.com/products/41972/Intel-Desktop-Board-DQ965GFE
  3. ↑ 3.003.013.023.033.043.053.063.073.083.093.103.113.123.133.143.153.163.173.183.193.20 https://security-center.intel.com/advisory.aspx?intelid=INTEL-SA-00075
  4. ↑ 4.04.14.2 https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/wiki/How-does-it-work%3F
  5. ↑ 5.05.1 https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/wiki/HAP-AltMeDisable-bit
  6. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_5_Series#Ibex_Peak
  7. ↑ https://ark.intel.com/products/42706/Intel-Q57-Express-Chipset
  8. ↑ 8.08.18.2 The Ethernet controller is capable of running some fimrwares( like AMT 1.0), but the hardware is not configured to do it on that machine. So no firmwares are loaded. See Intel_82573_Ethernet_controller for more details.
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