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A comment on Intel Microcode Decryptor. Parent comment

Re:Intel Microcode Decryptor by masklinn on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @05:56AM (#32149469)
What whole thing? Instruction microcoding is nothing new.

Or do you mean.

- the TXE vulnerability and / or undocumented debugging mode (so microcode wouldn’t have been extracted)

- microcode encryption so the microcode would always have been completely readable

- x86

- Intel itself

?

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Re:Intel Microcode Decryptor by jacquesm on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @06:12AM (#32149564)
The second, possibly combined with something dirty.

I can see why they would sign/encrypt it so that things got safer, but then they should have done a much better job of it. If it was encrypted to hide something that could not stand the light of day then that's an entirely different matter altogether.

Time will tell.

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Re:Intel Microcode Decryptor by aleks224 on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @06:31AM (#32149674)
At what point in time did encrypting microcode in processors become common? Is this a relatively recent practice?
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Re:Intel Microcode Decryptor by alophawen on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @06:51AM (#32149793)
IIRC, it happened when IME was introduced. Maybe 2008?

Then AMD PSP did the same starting in 2013.

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