Re:How Intel Makes a Chip
by PeCaN on Saturday June 11, 2016 @06:02PM
(#11885548)
They don't try particularly hard to cover that up. It's well-enough known that RDRAND is highly likely to be NSA-backdoored. They could always just shove NSA stuff into the ME anyway (currently there's no reason to believe that they do this, however).
[ Parent
| on HN ]
I find it highly unlikely just based on basic economics.
Imagine the potential conversation between Intel and the NSA:
NSA: Please backdoor your RNG for us. Intel: We're making xx billions of this chip. What happens if someone finds out and we have to recall the chip. Are you paying us the xx billions back then? NSA: ...
It is fairly unlikely the NSA could afford Intel.
Re:How Intel Makes a Chip
by nickpsecurity on Saturday June 11, 2016 @06:42PM
(#11885726)
You should look at the Snowden leaks sometime. They had cooperation, including backdoors, in a large number of companies' products and networks. RSA cost them about $30 mil to risk whole market. For carriers, usually around $100 mil or so.
Also, remember that it's easier to do if you disguise it as a coding flaw. It wasn't a backdoor: just one among many flaws accidentally hitting our systems. Wouldn't cost any market share.
Re:How Intel Makes a Chip
by CyberDildonics on Saturday June 11, 2016 @07:17PM
(#11885851)
I think it would be something more like:
NSA: Please backdoor all sorts of stuf Intel: ok
Security Researcher: these chips have backdoors
Intel: Maybe they do, what are you going to do about it?
Intel has plausible deniability. A backdoor in RDRAND would be some very minor statistical flaw. It could just be something tiny that makes private keys susceptible to some known or unknown attack.
Doesn't matter still a recall will be called for.
RDRAND is probably microcoded, so they should just be able to patch it out. Since they can't be charged with anything malicious, Intel gets off scot-free.