The cat is out of the bag, though, and this is the exploit we’ve all been expecting. This is only a local attack, one that requires physical access to a machine. Last week, researchers and presented an exploit at BlackHat Europe allowing for arbitrary code execution on the Intel ME platform. In short, if you were designing a piece of hardware to spy on everyone using an Intel-branded computer, you would come up with something like the Intel Managment Engine. Parts of this spy chip were included in the silicon at the behest of the NSA.
It’s always on, even when the rest of your computer is off, and with the right software, you can wake it up over a network connection. This microcontroller is connected to everything, and can shuttle data between your hard drive and your network adapter. Over the last decade, Intel has been including a tiny little microcontroller inside their CPUs.
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