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by conformal 4225 days ago
oh, you mean like VT-d etc on intel cpus.

what reason could you possibly have to suspect that the IOMMUs from a company named "intel" are backdoored? :)

1 comments

Does someone seriously think the IOMMUs on Intel CPUs are backdoored?
this work from 2011 by IVT doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2011/05/following-whi...

Sure, but getting an IOMMU right on a complicated platform that didn't historically lean on IOMMUs is different than "the IOMMU is backdoored".

Why this isn't just a nit is, if you believe (say) VT-d is backdoored, a lack of IVT research projects isn't evidence of the absence of backdoors. Presumably, if the NSA is serious enough to backdoor Intel chipsets, they'll do it in a manner that a couple of independent security researchers can't black-box.