News Intel confirms anti-theft technology for Sandy Bridge

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/12/20/intel-confirms-anti-theft/1

 

Awaiting the code to disable the CPU to be leaked in 3, 2, 1....

Seriously though, it's a good idea, albeit one that throws up a huge amount of questions regarding possible malicious use of this feature. I can already see LAN parties where a competitor simply disables other gamers' PCs to gain the upper hand at SC2..

 

umm how does this stop someone browseing your HDD (or perhaps more importantly one of the governments Lackeys harddrives

that is more important imho

 

All vPro systems have a TPM, which Windows can use to encrypt the hard drive with BitLocker. Plus I believe there's another technology to lock the hard drive to the motherboard.

 

I ain't ever letting this tech anywhere near my server rack. Screw data theft, I'm more worried about a permanent denial of service (PDoS?) attack that needs CPU replacements to fix.

I'm not even sure it's a good idea for desktop stuff that might get stolen. let alone laptops. Makes a nice attack vector that shuts down an entire company office for a few days when deployed right. Or you're sitting in a coffee shop using WiFi and next thing you know you're staring at a brick with keys on it.

In the NHS we used Safeboot to do almost exactly the same thing without it being at the hardware level so you could do something about it if it kicks in inappropriately.

 

worst idea ever

 

its a good idea in the sense that it buys you more time but once the cpu is dead your hard drive is wide open for anyone to enter. besides, i'd rather put a tracking system on the laptop and have the possibility of getting it back. since intel cpus are so expensive (and their corporate CPUs are ridiculously expensive), i wouldn't like to kill my cpu and buy a new one if i were to ever get it back.

 

Its just another exploitable dumb idea for attacks by people who want to screw up other people's computers for a lol. Just no.

 

If it works, great!

 

Have people seen this?

http://www.trustedreviews.com/cpu-memory/news/2010/12/20/Sandy-Bridge-Processors-Go-On-Sale/p1

A shop in Malaysia has put some Sandy Bridge on sale!

"The high end Core i7 clocks in at 3.4GHz and will set you back 939 Malaysian ringgits (RM) or about £190. This is followed by 609RM (£125) for the 3.1GHz 2400, and 585RM (£120) for the 2.8GHz 2300. "

 

okay so they disable the computer then what? Im sure a person looking at it from information stand point will just yank the hdd and start nabbing the info that way. Seems a bit pointless, not to mention the risk of non IT guys doing this for fun to peoples systems.

 

I'm assuming that the HDDs will be encrypted somehow. What i'm curious about is the method with which this remote panel can communicate the disable command to the laptop, for example if it's not connected to the internet.

 

lol, im never going to buy anything with a sandy-bridge chip in it

this would make an amusing virus,

seriously though how hard would it be to create a virus that auto destroys these chips

 

Sounds like a "feature" - in the same way that DRM is...

 

if this tech shows up in consumer chips, Intel can kiss my business goodbye!

 

+1 to the CPU-virus-locking-idea

 

So how long before a virus is developed for it?

 

Normally it takes them about a week to crack the DRM for a game. Since this is a bit more hardware based I would say two weeks? Three at the top.

 

What if someone steals the anti theft technonolgy and kills your computer? I don't tust this from intel.

 

Sounds like we could see a return to the days of holding computers for ransom with a virus. Besides which, what's the keep the thief from switching out the processor before starting in on the data. From a data theft point of view, especially in the corporate world, you're looking at some pretty serious and capable professional hackers.