Thanks to Denis GNUtoo Carikli, we have a new basis for that conversation in this article. Serious as though these bugs may be, we cannot let them distract us from the broader issues: Intel considers the Intel Management Engine a feature, while it's nothing more than a threat to user freedom. boss' work laptop failing to boot while somewhere far away from you connect to their home computer (or router), redirect AMT, boot from DART (or your tool of choice), fix the problemīefore I think it was more useful to smaller businesses with limited or no on-site IT, but now even a lot of enterprise sysadmins work from home so it comes in handy for those as well.With security issues like the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities discovered in Intel chips in early 2018, it became more important than ever to talk about the necessity of software freedom in these deeply embedded technologies.hard drive is failing (or switching from HDD -> SSD), just plug in the new drive and go home, then clone the drive remotely, go to BIOS, set booting from new drive, disable the old drive, reboot.restore a bare metal workstation backup remotely.machine is broken, just replace it and set the new one up from scratch remotely.system does not boot, you can see the reason and fix it remotely.you need to do something on the machine remotely but user turned it off and WOL is not working.
Some examples (at least for the AMT part): Speaking of which, isn't Intel ME a often used target for hackers given the access it has, especially since it bypasses the OS? I suspect some IT shops have attempted to disable the feature altogether to avoid having to worry about patching it all the time (although I'm not 100% sure you can completely disable ME). The only reason I know it exists is that it seems like we have to mitigate a vulnerability with it every year or two. If you have used these, and the experience was mostly good, could you also share a 'use case' where it has provided some kind of value? For example, did it make IT's easier? did it improve the IT/end-user support experience? or allowed the security team to 'sleep better at night'?ĭespite this feature being present for over a decade, neither I or my team have taken any time to figure out what it can do for us.
If you do leverage ME, do you also leverage these ME-related features?
If you are currently leveraging Intel Management Engine (ME), or have done so previously, could you share your experiences with ME, both good, bad and indifferent?
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