
Why Intel will never let owners control the ME - hlandau
https://www.devever.net/~hl/intelme
======
bumholio
It's incredible how much effort and money has gone down this drain, chasing
the fundamentally flawed idea of DRM. All to satisfy some inflated management
egos and sell snake oil to the content industry - the enginners implementing
these schemes must surely realize it's in vain, that the attack surface
includes all devices in the world and all it takes is a single successful hack
against a single device to decrypt the content after which it's game over.

And the consumer is paying for all of this security theater.

~~~
hlandau
The really horrible truth is, DRM was probably never intended to prevent
piracy. I used to think this - then you realise what DRM is actually intended
to do. So long as we argue like this, we're not confronting the real motives.

There seem to be two arguments for DRM which could be considered logical from
an executive's perspective (even if in my view unethical):

\- Firstly, it delays the initial piracy of new releases. This is very
variable and since new DRM systems aren't created as often as new films, this
only seems to be successfully pulled off every now and then... but there have
demonstrably been cases of it delaying piracy by a few weeks (hell, there's at
least one video game which wasn't cracked for over a year). This probably
feels valuable to executives who expect the bulk of returns on a film or video
game to come immediately after release (especially if they have unrealistic
expectations about correlations between piracy and lost sales).

\- Secondly, and more significantly, it ensures that media companies can
control how content is consumed, and control the devices available to consume
content. If you want to make a Blu-ray player, you have to sign contracts, and
those contracts can tell you what functionality to add and what not to add.
"Unauthorized" players, circumvention technology will always exist for the
fringes, but that's too minor to care about. What it does mean - in tandem
with the anticircumvention technology ban legislation, 17 USC 1202 - is that
you can't walk into a retail chain store and buy a Blu-ray player that'll
happily make copies, or so on. Most likely this is what these companies really
care about - ensuring they have a say on what Homer Simpson has to choose from
in Best Buy.

To be clear, I unequivocally oppose DRM; but I suspect the above points are a
closer approximation of the motives of the media industry in pushing it.

~~~
vesinisa
Moreover, DRM enables content industry to control _where_ content can be
played, known as geoblocking. For example, I live in North Europe, and the
titles that are available in 'official', DRM-controlled sources, such as
Netflix, are noticeably different than in North America. Maybe Netflix only
has distribution rights for some title in the US market, so when I try to look
it up the search comes back empty.

What DRM allows Netflix is to still sell one and the same subscription
globally. The content you can view is _not_ tied to your account's registered
post address or such, but which physical region of the Internet you are
actually accessing the service from currently. When we were visiting the US,
my spouse was able to play titles with her Netflix subscription that are not
available at home, because she was connecting to the US DRM servers from the
WiFi of our Airbnb in California.

For our flight home, she put her phone in flight mode and was able to watch
cached titles during the flight. But as soon as she turned on her data in
Europe, the titles magically disappeared in thin air, as the EU DRM server
realized the geoblocking violation and revoked her license to those titles.

~~~
bubblethink
Geoblocking is entirely different from DRM. The former is a simple transaction
of "Show me your IP" -> "You can't have this". DRM is a far more complicated
thing that needs cooperation from all levels of the stack to enable, "Your
computer can see this, but you, the user, can't".

~~~
vesinisa
Yes, but combining DRM and geoblocking allows the content distributor to
_retroactively_ revoke access to content when you change the geoblocking
region, such as traveling to another continent. Even content that you have
downloaded to an offline cache can be rendered unavailable. From the
distributor's point of view combining the two offers an enhanced form of
geoblocking that transcends time.

------
pmontra
If disabling ME would only prevent me from watching Ultra-HD Blu-rays, which I
don't watch, I'll disable ME immediately if I only could.

That won't breach any obvious contractual obligations of Intel/AMD with
Hollywood.

~~~
hlandau
That's not the issue. You can already disable pretty much all of the ME's
functions post-boot with HAP and me_cleaner. But for people who take an
interest in fully-open source firmware (coreboot, libreboot), it would be nice
to be able to replace the ME firmware with something open source. But this is
impossible because the hardware will only run Intel-signed blobs. By "owner
control", I mean the freedom to run whatever you like on the ME. It's likely
that Intel is not only unwilling, but contractually precluded from letting
people do so, for the reasons I gave. Hence the claim that Intel will never
let people control what runs on the ME.

~~~
close04
The reasoning presented by this article is very "conspiracy-style". The
arguments revolve around GPUs which are a more natural fit for DRM mechanisms:
they display the image, and are more apt at decoding/encoding that protected
stream than the CPU.

But using ME for DRM in the near future is highly unlikely since it would just
be a boon for ARM based systems. With CPUs that can be designed and sold at
far lower cost (and performance) by manufacturers that are willing to forego
such lunacies as DRM embedded in x86 CPUs and get a foothold in the market.
And x86 already feels past its prime given that many usage scenarios already
migrated to ARM devices.

At some point the CPU, GPU, and a hypothetical VPU might share the same die in
a heterogeneous chip, and this might include such DRM protection for the
reasons GPUs have them now. But the x86 CPU part having built-in DRM? I'm not
buying it without someone making a better case than this article.

The ME is just Intel's pi*s-poor attempt at securing the system. But it's
mostly security through obscurity so basically almost none at all. The more
"conspiracy" version is that it serves specifically as a back door for certain
agency type actors. Which is not unlikely.

But the more obvious reason is that at this point opening it up is no longer
an option. It would mean opening the door widely to an avalanche of exploits
capable of hitting systems 12 years back. Something that would make
Meltdown/Spectre look tame since there is no OS fix for ME. Also, in Intel's
vision letting you control the ME is like giving you the keys to the kingdom.
They can't admit to themselves that the ME is not a locked gate, it's a moat.
And if you're willing to get dirty you will get through it.

~~~
comex
The ME has in fact been used for video DRM for a long time; Google for Intel
PAVP (Protected Audio-Video Path).

~~~
close04
The important fact being that it only applied to the Intel iGPU. You also had
the option to disable that and the HW decoding with the iGPU was also
disabled.

The successor is called Intel Insider and it's still aimed at the GPU.
Basically it's there to make sure the stream goes to the GPU (which has DRM)
to be decrypted not to the CPU. That's because nobody was "courageous" enough
until now to put the DRM label on a CPU.

[https://blogs.intel.com/technology/2011/01/intel_insider_-
_w...](https://blogs.intel.com/technology/2011/01/intel_insider_-
_what_is_it_no/)

------
Animats
There should be a market for business desktops which don't have the ME, and
don't have the keys for decrypting paid video content. You don't need your
employees watching movies on their work machine, and the security is better.

------
kev009
The one you want
[https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html](https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html)

Open source and toolchain and access and validation turtles all the way down
[https://git.raptorcs.com/git/](https://git.raptorcs.com/git/)

~~~
mpartel
For others that didn't notice this new and somewhat less expensive version
come out, here's the HN thread from 2 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17124593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17124593)

~~~
pdonis
_> somewhat less expensive_

Only in the sense that the Atlantic Ocean has "somewhat less water" than the
Pacific. :-) Over $4K for a "desktop development system". That's not personal
computing. That's small scale enterprise computing, which is too small a
market to make a dent in Intel and AMD. Their prices need to come down by an
order of magnitude to make this technology a significant player.

~~~
kev009
Huh? It's under $2k for a daily drivable config. $1600 if you are willing to
do a 2.1 rev chip without HW speculative execution mitigations and some other
errata.

~~~
pdonis
_> It's under $2k for a daily drivable config._

Which config are you talking about?

~~~
kev009
Check the link in my original post and the child comment. You can buy DDR4-R
and NVMe cheaply from places like Superbiiz.

Here is the special DD2.1 box
[https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS1/intro.html](https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS1/intro.html)
for $1600.

~~~
pdonis
With a "starter CPU" that doesn't support virtualization, so realistically
you're paying another $375 for a CPU upgrade. Still quite a bit closer to a
useful price point, though. Thanks for the link!

~~~
kev009
You state this as if I didn't so I'm confused by that :S. Regardless it is
possible to do a full build for under $2k, especially if you have any resuable
parts like case/psu/nvme.

~~~
pdonis
_> You state this as if I didn't_

You mentioned the base CPU not having HW speculative execution mitigations
(which I also would consider worth a CPU upgrade to get), but not having
virtualization is a much bigger limitation, in my view, and you didn't mention
that, so I did.

------
badrabbit
I think there is a huge architectural philosophy divide here. Some think ME
has it's place if done right,but surely many would agree with me when saying
_all_ of ME's functionality should be implemented by the OS. ring -1 should
not exist. Period.

~~~
zvrba
> many would agree with me when saying all of ME's functionality should be
> implemented by the OS.

ME's use case is to be able to manage the machine when there is _no_ OS
installed, is unbootable or unresponsive. So somebody doesn't have to
physically visit a datacenter and find the machine in a rack.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Techno...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Technology)

~~~
badrabbit
Right,what is needed is a management OS(think efi-like). Also,kvm+ipmi[1] is
used for that mostly,not ME.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Platform_Managem...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Platform_Management_Interface)

~~~
isostatic
So ME isn't a cheap on-chip version of ipmi then?

------
makecheck
So, the definition of a feature only required for a _single_ application
(playback), and unwanted by consumers at that. This _clearly_ did not belong
in any general-purpose processor (if it should have been built at all).

You know, if movie and recording studios want this so badly, let them put up
the _billions_ it should require for them to produce their own coprocessor.

------
Sniffnoy
The question I always have about this is, why has nobody tried to make the
case that this is illegal? ESR has suggested that the selling of routers with
closed-source firmware ought to be regarded as the tort of conversion; this is
a similar but stronger case.

~~~
ghthor
Maybe because not enough engineers have lawyer friends that understand
technology well enough to listen to us complain about all this dumb shit we
have to deal with. We all need to make more lawyer friends.

------
nickpsecurity
Here's a supporting link from Intel's blog in 2011 that they are DRMing for
Hollywood:

[https://blogs.intel.com/technology/2011/01/intel_insider_-
_w...](https://blogs.intel.com/technology/2011/01/intel_insider_-
_what_is_it_no/)

------
lioeters
At least one company is developing "a solid approach on how to run a freed
Intel ME": [https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/](https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/)

~~~
oneplane
That's not anything different from the described HAP bit and removal of
unneeded modules. You still have 10% of the ME left and required to boot, on
top of the BSP, which is also 'secret'.

~~~
ghthor
Yep, we need new silicon designs, new fabs, and a new corporate structure that
isn't as susceptible to this type of corruption.

~~~
IronBacon
Well, according to the linked post to Phoronix, the POWER9 architecture is not
produced for OEM PC market requirements so it doesn't have do oblige Hollywood
non-negotiable DRM requirements.

Did I understood right? Until now I thought the only option was using pre 2008
Intel (and same era AMD?) CPUs or some Atom models...

~~~
oneplane
And then there is some ARM and RISC-V, those could become viable.

------
INTPenis
So the author is claiming that the main reason why ME exists is DRM.

I can see it being one of the reasons but it is also a pretty good anti-theft
system if you look at it naively.

And I haven't seen a laptop with a CD tray for at least 7 years. Who is
playing these bluray discs in their laptop?

~~~
jchw
Intel also benefits from ME in many many ways, I'm sure. Like obviously it is
a massive value add to their Enterprise customers.

However, I think the argument in the article still holds water, not because
Blu-ray matters, but because nobody had any idea it wouldn't. CPU and GPU
manufacturers probably have extremely long contracts to implement and obscure
DRM features, fueled in part by Hollywood's sore feelings from the DVD Jon
days.

Of course Netflix and Hulu and so forth happened and whoops, laptops got thin
and stopped having optical drives and oops, Samsung added streaming services
to their TVs... And now Bluray and it's assinine security schemes hardly
matter. Hollywood didn't adapt well to this new streaming world so I'll bet
they didn't see it coming either.

Of course the threats not over. Next generation we'll probably see even more
insane copyright protection coming out of Hollywood for the sake of protecting
services like Netflix as a contractual obligation if they want to carry the
hot new garbage. I'm particularly excited to see what happens with stuff like
Intel SGX.

This will probably continue for the next couple decades until a set of
realizations finally become too apparent to ignore. After all, the pirates
torrenting the latest Game of Thrones don't need Intel SGX or HDCP. They just
click play.

But the more delusional and out of touch the industry is, the longer it takes.
Video game DRM may not be a solved problem but even the absolute worst
protection available today is so much less hostile than what we were dealing
with a decade ago that it hardly matters. Hell, nowadays with PC games,
anticheat is the more invasive technology. Modern invasive DRM mostly just
phones home to get some crypto keys and to try to limit a single license from
being spread to the entire internet. It may seem anticonsumer, but it's the
worst there is, and it's very telling that gamers seem more concerned about
tracking technology than middleware like Denuvo.

~~~
hlandau
Don't assume that hardware-level DRM will go away with the death of optical
media. As I understand it, the media industry seems to have adopted a standard
position that UHD/4K content should require hardware-level DRM. UHD Blu-rays
require this sort of thing, but also UHD streams on Netflix; for this reason
at least at one point UHD Netflix was restricted to Chromebooks only. Not sure
if this is still the case; I'd expect Google's Widevine to get Intel DRM
support if it hasn't got it already.

You might want to look at Widevine's website; there's a small amount of
information on the security levels. Essentially, there seem to be two levels
of Widevine; what I'd describe as the placebo level (just obfuscated data
processing within the browser, etc.) that might be used for e.g. HD Netflix,
and the toxic-waste level which expects hardware-level DRM, which industry
appears to be demanding as a minimum standard for UHD content. Consumer demand
for UHD Netflix will continue to drive adoption of hardware-level DRM for the
time being, it seems.

------
qubex
This is a large part of why I find myself continually eyeing those TALOS
OpenPower9 systems.

------
blackflame7000
One technology breakthrough for ARM over x86(which has little room left for
improvement at this point), could be a watershed moment for the chip
manufacturers

~~~
0xcde4c3db
This stuff doesn't exist because of a particular vendor or ISA; it's a
mainstream feature for modern application platforms. Many ARM systems achieve
similar ends through a kind of hypervisor / shadow OS that can't readily be
disabled by the device owner [1].

[1] [https://www.arm.com/products/security-on-
arm/trustzone](https://www.arm.com/products/security-on-arm/trustzone)

~~~
rhn_mk1
DRM schemes are explicitly listed and talked about as one of the 3
applications of TrustZone in the official docs.

------
Confiks
So the article is portraying 4k blu-ray as the _raison d 'être_ for Intel ME
on consumer devices, but isn't for example Netflix HD which uses HDCP 2.2
somehow also tied to a trusted execution environment within Intel CPUs, or is
this method of protection only via the display and the graphics chip
(sometimes also by Intel; on the motherboard)?

~~~
hlandau
The ME-based DRM provided by Intel isn't inherently limited to securing UHD
Blu-rays, and you can expect Google's Widevine, as used by Netflix, to consume
this functionality as well.

My understanding is that the industry has decided that UHD/4K content should
require hardware-level DRM, no matter whether on disc or streamed, and that
Netflix UHD requires a system with this functionality.

------
franga2000
The thing we need now is a version of the GDPR for hardware and software. A
law that says that non-essential features mustn't be inseparably bundled with
essential system features so the user can disable them without killing the
system. Just like the GDPR did for essential data and marketing data. Is this
so far-fetched?

~~~
tonysdg
It'd be damn tricky to implement, probably impossibly so. I can think of a few
reasons:

\- Modern lithography just isn't that precise to my understanding. The whole
point of binning chips is that you aim for an entire wafer of Core i9s, but
you accept that some flaws will occur and will require disabling features of
the chip. Are the disabled features "non-essential"? Certainly seems like they
are if they can be disabled.

\- From a marketing perspective, you'd need to help customers decipher dozens
of different models of the same chip. For _n_ features, you'd need (2^ _n_ )-1
chips, right? So Model A would support everything; Model B would support
everything except virtualization; Model C eould support everything except
HDCP; and so on.

\- And as a customer, does that mean I need to spend $500 and replace my CPU
everytime I realize I need a new feature? How would that work for laptops,
where chips are frequently soldered to the motherboard?

I'm sympathetic to the idea of requiring transparency in general, but
unfortunately hardware is a helluva lot trickier than software.

~~~
kilburn
You can disable most of that stuff from the bios/efi, so you already can
effectively opt out of those features. This would be enough for a harware-gdpr
thingy I think...

~~~
tonysdg
That's true -- I guess I hadn't been thinking of it from that perspective.
There'd still be the problem of asking consumers to "opt out/in" of these
features, of course. It's hard enough asking consumers to make informed
decisions when it comes to "can we use your photos/track you online" \-- now
you'd be asking "do you want to run virtual machines/access encrypted
content/etc.".

But I guess I'd appreciate the ability to turn more stuff on/off in the BIOS
-- makes me think of the whole "dark silicon" notion (if I don't use my laptop
for Netflix, can I disable the streaming encryption stuff to save battery
life?).

------
ddtaylor
It would be nice if this kind of thing could be used to stop cheating in games
providing a secure channel of communication between server --> cpu --> gpu,
but that likely won't work considering it's not working very well to stop
media from being pirated in it's current application.

~~~
J-Kuhn
Yes, this is one application.

Google "Software Guard Extensions" and "Intel Enclave"

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions)

~~~
ddtaylor
Any idea if commercial games are using this yet?

~~~
dogma1138
There are a few DRMs that offer using it but none of them are in use mostly
because of market share issues.

SGX isn’t available on the majority of consumer CPUs because it’s a fairly new
extension and it’s Intel exclusive.

I know of a few enterprise products that use it for their “soft-dongle”
licensing if you don’t want to plug in a license dongle in your server, yes
it’s 2018 and we still have license dongles like it’s 1988, ESRI I’m looking
at you.

------
JumpCrisscross
How does Apple deal with this?

~~~
bryanbuckley
Probably wanting to use their own solution (read: CPUs/SoCs, secure enclave)
for their computers.

------
husamia
there has to be a perception among the consumers that they are purchasing
valuable content. the DRM makes this perception real. No DRM means no profit

------
mixmastamyk
Not sure I buy the part about DRM and market suicide. Who uses optical discs
any longer? I don’t know anyone, though several have old collections from a
decade ago gathering dust.

Also first I’ve heard that a new blu ray even exists.

~~~
guitarbill
Yeah, it doesn't make sense, especially for enterprise CPUs. Which server
manufacturer/large datacenter operator cares about DRM? And conversely,
wouldn't they rather not have another attack vector? So there must be
legitimate enterprise use-cases for ME/PSP, or something else is going on.

~~~
mixmastamyk
They talk about remote management, but there's no requirement for that to be a
secret that I know of.

------
alexandernst
"They won't let you disable ME because of Hollywood".

I don't know, Rick... I'll call this argument bullshit.

I'm pretty sure there is a very good (evil) reason Intel won't let us disable
ME, but it's not "Hollywood".

