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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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Consumer usage is not really concerned by the attack scenario of this vulnerability from what I understand. The prerequisite is to have access to the bios so it's already game over at this point.
Sure, but that feels a little bit like saying “We don’t need guards inside the prison, because we already have them patrolling around the perimeter.”
Chip makes should not only treat customer CPUs as possibly-business hardware when adding shit like (Intel) ME, Pluton and (AMD) PSP, but also when patching serious vulnerabilities and providing support!
When you pay for enterprise equipment, you are typically paying a premium for longer, more robust support. Consumer products are less expensive because they don't get this support.
But they are already pretending for whatever reason that these are suitable for enterprises, by always includingthe aformentioned remote control components!
Agreed, firmware security by chip manufacturers has been underwhelming to say the least and we can blame them for that. But in this specific instance I still don't see the benefit of a fix for consumer usage. Companies have a responsibility and accountability toward their users, so a fix is due, for personal laptops/PCs the threat is toward the owners themselves (activists, diplomats, journalists, etc.). The latter do not buy second hand equipment, and if the firmware is compromised while they own it, they are already in danger.
You are assuming activists are well funded in some way, and that they are not repressed.
This obviously has a benefit for consumer usage too, same as encryption. You're basically saying consumers don't need any kind of antivirus either, because it's not that critical.
This vuln should have been fixed for consumer hardware too, because it basically permanently taints all hardware that is vulnerable to it. And what makes it so hard to release patches for consumer hardware, when patches were already made for the same generations of enterprise hardware? Basically the majority of the work has been done already
I'm not saying this is a small issue and nothing should be done. I just noted that the issue is not as big as some other hardware-based vulnerabilities we encountered in the past. And every threat model calls for a corresponding counter-measure.