I would argue that the out of band management provided by DMTF DASH is closer to what people consider then Intel backdoor then the AMD PSP. The PSP cannot be accessed remotely and is only available locally which removes most of the attack surface.
Recent (1-2 years?) AMD BIOS supports disabling the Platform Security Processor (their ME equivalent).
I haven't been able to figure out what exactly this means, but it does seem to be disabled after system initialization. Kind of like Intel's HAP bit, except user-settable.
Thanks for that! This is quite relevant to me right now as I'm thinking about my next upgrade. Obviously, I'd prefer to buy AMD, especially if this disable switch is legit. But grotesquely, I'm still considering going with Intel, because at least I know I can use me_cleaner there, and more or less understand exactly what it does. Hopefully this document will clear some of that up.
Welp. Their response to Raptor in that thread just forever cost System76 my business.
System76 takes the position that compatibility with x86 binaries is worth having to take closed, remote-access-enabled, binary firmware. That's a position someone can take.
Responding "So what?" and "I was expecting this" is just nasty and unprofessional.
That's not System76 account. It's a personal account of one person who has a history of being harassed by Raptor. Raptors tweets were from their official account, and your reaction was the exact goal of their antagonism.
It does read like that, but even so, the initial question from Raptor Computing Sys was very well worded and not disrespectful at all. The inability to at a minimum leave it as "We've covered this before, and disagree on some items. We'll have to agree to disagree and leave it at that." or even "I'm doing what I can, we'll see where it ends up in the end" or "See the official account for official statements" is the troubling part. Then a gain, that doesn't appear to be uncommon on Twitter, where everyone seems to have trouble disambiguating their professional and personal lives, and those of the people they are responding to (which is related).
was read as abrasive; that tweet can be read as a snarky attack that belittles the efforts of the porter, to which the "so what?" response is apt – in fact, a de-escalation.
And yet, in reality, it wasn't one. (This is why you assume good faith, people!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processo...