

Ask HN: I just gota new macbook. How can I check for NSA sabotage? - quantumpotato_

Specifically, Intel chips that are known to be sabotaged, or programs I can run to search for network interference?
======
na85
Well, it's hard to combat an adversary whose capabilities aren't known.

They _could_ have hardware backdoors installed that would theoretically be
undetectable unless you opened your case up and physically compared each chip
and integrated circuit against a known whitelist.

They _could_ have software backdoors installed in the form of firmware or
microcode. Auditing these things is also very difficult because most of the
time the manufacturers do not provide much (if any) documentation.

They _could_ have malicious peripherals installed such as usb cables with
hardware keyloggers built in, in which case you'd have to physically cut open
all your cables, etc.

They _could_ have rootkits installed, though there are tools such as rkhunter
and chkrootkit that attempt to discover these.

>Intel chips that are known to be sabotaged

Check your chip(s) against any known blacklists or whitelists that you might
have access to

>programs I can run to search for network interference?

Depends on your level of paranoia, but a sophisticated rootkit could hide
network traffic from any firewalls on your machine, so you'd need to do
monitoring with a second machine using something like Ethereal (I think it's
called Wireshark these days?)

------
staunch
Microwave on high for 20-30 minutes. Season to taste.

------
gotwalt
Soak it in water for twenty minutes. The fake identifier stickers will fall
off.

------
yen223
Step one, purchase a controlling stake in your own chip fabrication plant...

