[confounded]

They also won government contracts by not doing it; the High Assurance Platform mode (‘setting the HAP bit’) was a feature implemented by Intel for the NSA, incidentally discovered by security researchers.

Dell sold laptops with this as an option until they were asked not to.

It would be pretty easy for a sizable country or even a wealthy US state to demand that these ‘secure’ co-processors can be disabled at the user’s discretion, via regulation.

From the NSA’s perspective, having the keys to the backdoor is an asset, but having a backdoor at all is a huge liability, now they’re not the only game in town. US businesses and citizens simply have more to lose.

Honestly, I think it’s laziness and inertia more than conspiracy.

[_emacsomancer_]

> From the NSA’s perspective, having the keys to the backdoor is an asset, but having a backdoor at all is a huge liability, now they’re not the only game in town. US businesses and citizens simply have more to lose. Honestly, I think it’s laziness and inertia more than conspiracy.

You're assuming (fully) rational actors. It's fairly easy to have blindspots when they are (at least temporarily) useful.

[gcb0]

nobody is seeing this for what this really is: Apple users compromised by internal agent.

Nation states already paid google employees to target gmail etc. now they targeted an apple employee to make this mistake which allows any targeted attack into those companies that gives mbp to developers very easy to carry out remotely, as this probably leave the remote capabilities put in place for the NSA wide open.

[Sephr]

> Dell sold laptops with this as an option until they were asked not to.

Source?

[robin_reala]

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/7grglm/how_t...