A remote kill switch in every computer?

[undergroundpanther]

Intel is preparing to launch its Sandy Bridge processors at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. The most interesting thing about these new processors is the kill switches that are built into them.

Sandy Bridge is the code name for Intel’s processor configuration and it is the successor to Nehalem.

According to an ITBusiness.ca article, David Allen, director of distribution sales, North America at Intel said that although Sandy Bridge is now shipping to Intel's distribution and equipment partners, Intel Premier partners are the only ones that can purchase it before the general release date, which is scheduled to coincide with CES.


Allen told ITBusiness.ca that users no longer need to worry if their laptop gets lost or stolen because with Sandy Bridge it can be shut down remotely.

However, most victims of laptop thefts probably worry more about getting their computer back than they do preventing unauthorized use of Internet porn on their computer.

Is that what computer consumers really want? Kill switches on everything that could allow them to be taken off the information superhighway with one "accidental" stroke?

http://www.tgdaily.com/opinion-features/53108-analysis-intel-to-introduce-processor-with-remote-kill-switch?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tgdaily_all_sections+%28TG+Daily+-+All+News%29


I'll keep my OLD puter...

[Poll_Blind]

1. I am always lookign for new ways to buy things which could be destroyed remotely!

Fuck that noise.

PB

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. I do NOT want any such thing in any computer of mine.

Next thing you know, they'll be trying to limit what we look at...

No, thank you.

My laptop is password protected, and when I'm away from it, it's off.

[Pavulon]

10. it will wake on command...

there are all kinds of interesting things computers can be made to do.

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Violet_Crumble]

28. Awesome! Maybe they could make computers self-destruct at any contact with leaked diplomatic cables!

;)

[Pavulon]

37. Or just secure their systems..

which they failed to do. Even then you cant protect the system from the user you trust.

file cache technology is really cool. Take the kitty gifs i post.

Lets say you live next door to another poster in Colorado and those gifs are on a server in nc. When you download that file an appliance used by the internet providers copies that file to a disk drive locally, near where you are. it is cached. now when poster b clicks that link, since he lives next door, or in the same city, that file is loaded from DISK and sent to him. this speeds things up.

The appliance knows that that file is and assigns it a fingerprint. Now that appliance can also be told to destroy that file. other equipment can determine what that file looks like in flight and disable its source or just redirect the traffic to nowhere.

There are lots of options just using them may not be worth the effort.

[peacebird]

3. crap - guess i better hope this old laptop keeps working for a LONG time

[midnight]

4. Hmmm...

[FLPanhandle]

5. Great for business users

The fear is confidential company information getting out if an employee's laptop is stolen. I can see this being in great demand by defense contractors, accounting firms, legal firms, etc.

[dreamnightwind]

6. Could be, also individuals

Many people store bank accounts, passwords, credit card numbers, etc., on their computers. I'm sure that's more relevant to the idea of a remote kill switch than preventing someone from using it for internet porn after they steal it. Personal computers contain a lot of info you wouldn't want to fall in the wrong hands, and if the computer is stolen, it's in the wrong hands.

Not saying I favor the remote kill switch idea, I'll need to know more about its implications before deciding. Just saying the issue is not presented well in this OP, though I am glad the OP brought the issue to our attention, I'm close to buying a computer and hadn't heard about this.

[TheMadMonk]

8. Only if the other security features are also enabled.

ie drive level encryption. Or else 5 mins with a screwdriver will liberate hard drive and data.

[mrdmk]

21. I will take your five minutes and up to one minutes with a can opener

Yeah that is the ticket, lets turn-off the processor to stop computer theft. Dumb!!!

[Kalyke]

18. You don't need a kill switch to protect info.

You need dual or triple authentication.

And, even so, a "killed" hard drive doesn't erase itself anymore than a "stopped" hard drive. The only way to "kill" info is to PHYSICALLY destroy the HD.

[sendero]

29. There is already a pretty solid..

.. solution to that problem in the form of whole-disk PGP encryption.

This is a bad idea that will be abused by the government in the future. I will not buy one of those machines, of course I never buy Intel anyway.

[hobbit709]

30. There are ways around that

But it takes some expensive equipment.

[truedelphi]

41. Does this mean that buying an Apple computer will save you?

Intel has become ubiquitous and I don't know if it's only the PC world that uses their products these days.

Any advice appreciated.

[glinda]

7. There will be money in knowing how to remove them.

[Pavulon]

9. The cpu is on the board, it does not come off.. drive level

encryption where all operations on the bus(including main memory) are encoded are available.

encrypting a hard drive is generally effective enough for those trying to avoid industrial espionage.

Knowing what is coming and going off the box is really the important part.

[RC]

11. The CPU is plugged into a socket on the mother board.

It does come off - on both laptops and desktops.
Data recovery on a hard drive that is encrypted is all but imposable from a crashed drive.

[Pavulon]

12. I have never seen a laptop cpu replaced as a unit.

always as the entire board. I'm sure its possible but most companies treat the cpu and MB as one sku. I have not separated the two in a PC or Server board in almost 10 years.

And yes unless you are a TLA you are not getting a drive back if its contents were encrypted.

[Cerridwen]

23. Uhm, what? "most companies treat the cpu and MB as one sku."

"I have not separated the two in a PC or Server board in almost 10 years."

Scroll down to see how to replace CPU in Toshiba laptops as one example.

Go to this link to order a CPU to upgrade your laptop's CPU or your Desktops and servers are here. {not plugging the vendor here; just showing different categories of replacement CPUs available}

Please tell me you don't work anywhere near computer hardware if you're not aware that you can swap out a CPU.

[Pavulon]

32. Sure you CAN. and then you get to decide how much grease to use

and then worry if its to much...

I was saying in server and laptop hardware in the last events that involved errors with memory controllers for the cpu the entire board was replaced.

a sku is a bundle of parts from say dell or hp. my dl380 wont post send me a dude to install a new motherboars, send me a new motherboard cpu attached.

pcie cards and memory stay with the box, as long as there was no memory related problem.

I have not messed with laptop parts forever but if i get a cpu related error on my machine the board and the clock are getting replaced under warranty.

[Cerridwen]

39. Or, as in this case, you have a CPU you don't want, you replace

it and if you know what you're doing it's a 60 second swap. Or you make your own box and don't worry about this particular "remote controlled" CPU; or you buy a different brand.

I'll grant you, it's not a job for a beginner or an incompetent or someone who's dealing with tech support who are beginners or incompetents. I've had the displeasure of working with many of them over the years who'd rather throw the whole thing out than actually fix it because fixing it meant they might have to learn how to. I've seen hard drives wiped because the tech didn't know how to replace a driver and I've seen entire motherboards replaced because the idjit didn't know how to replace a heatsink, CPU, or a memory stick.

No wonder bill gates gets away with saying we don't have the talent in this country. Too many of the talentless are occupying jobs and proving him correct.

And, no, you did not say "in server and laptop hardware in the last events that involved errors with memory controllers for the cpu the entire board was replaced." Nor was that what I replied to.

What you said was "The cpu is on the board, it does not come off" which is incorrect. You also said "I have never seen a laptop cpu replaced as a unit." Well, they can be; by those who know how and/or have the patience to learn. And no it is not "always as the entire board." regardless of how "most companies treat the cpu and MB as one sku." Treating the CPU and MB as a unit is a marketing ploy that has little to do with the engineering and composition of the PC/laptop/or server.

Can a motherboard fry a CPU? Yes. Both will need to be replaced. Can a CPU fry a motherboard? Yes and the same resolution.

In this case, in this sub-thread, we're discussing removing one working CPU with "features" some don't want, with another working CPU without said "wonderful features." It can be done; relatively easily.

Though, as soon as my poor old laptop gives up the ghost, I, for one, will be home brewing and I won't be going within miles of intel.

[Pavulon]

42. Youare correct about the swap, what I am saying is also correct.

we probably both came up building machines to play games on. For my personal gear I would swap a cpu or other board part.

HOWEVER for business gear including laptops I will not do that. Here is why:

I travel with a MacBook to show customers cad cam work that we do for them. It is generally for aerospace or stuff that should not break. I had a machine panic with an NMI cpu related a few years ago at the office. IT folks (we are all engineers) had the apple people "fix" it.

The machine came back, I checked it briefly and left for Brazil. 30 minutes into a CPU intensive presentation, bang kernel panic. Not on the plane, not in the hotel, in front of people we are charging money for custom PCL and code.

Turns out the error was on the board not the die and the issue only showed up when the machine got to full temp. Luckily the data was on external disk and we used another machine the customer had.

So NOW when any part on a board fails, memory controller, cpu, RAM (not on the chip) fails, the ENTIRE board is replaced. We had been doing this for years with server class hardware, (other than IBM RISC gear)

The lesson is that it is worth the expense of dumping everything in the critical path and carrying a second machine.

For PLC boards if ANYTHING fails on board other than the memory we dump the entire part (our gear we make)

As for intel, all of the manufacturers have backdoors.

[glinda]

14. Explain "going off the box" to me. What does that mean? I do Macs and am

sure it will also be in there since they do Intel now.

[dreamnightwind]

17. Not addressed to me, but...

I'm pretty sure he means that an espionage attempt would likely focus on the info coming to and from your computer (the info that goes through the LAN cable or the wi-fi) as opposed to info stored on the hard drive. They would be more likely to steal the info going across the net rather than steal your machine. It depends, of course, on who is messing with a machine and why they're doing it.

A kill switch would not be necessary to protect against this, since you'd only use it if the machine was in someone else's physical possession. And in that case, anything between the machine and the outside world would be related to what the thief is doing, not to your own activities.

Not sure if that's what he meant though, and not sure how relevant that is to the kill switch idea, which would just keep someone from being able to use your machine after it is stolen. The thief could, of course, mount your hard drive as a slave on another machine, and read any info from it that way, regardless of a kill switch. If you have an encrypted hard drive that is much more difficult.

Sorry to butt in, hope that was relevant.

[Pavulon]

35. Like the other poster said it would be getting to data coming and going or

through the US as "you". Breaking in would be like going into the bank with a gun and telling the teller to give me the money from your (hypothetical) bank account.

The elegant way is to go into the bank with your id and copies of you checks and withdraw the money and leave with no scene. just another normal transaction.

This data loss model would apply to any machine running intel or risc based chips. Very valuable data is generally kept on stuff like AS400, AIX P and Z class hardware, Solaris, and other non intel machines.

Most server class hardware has shutdown capacity for large scale use. Take a set of 40 servers that crunch numbers. You run all 40 during peak load and then drop back to 10 when things get slow. The software managing them needs an automated path to do this.

[Kalyke]

19. D to the fuckin' L P.

Data Loss Protection.

And it requires far more than product.

[Lithos]

13. Awesome...

Something new for crackers to hack... What an awesome virus that will make... You attempt to remove it and it kills your system.

[RandomThoughts]

15. Should be optional.

Since it could be misused as a part of information warfare, or if hacked, even used nefariously.

[LoZoccolo]

16. Cell phones already have something similar, and yeah, they're pretty important.

I know on on iPhone, it encrypts everything and you can remotely wipe the key and brick the phone if it gets stolen. It's not so much about preventing people from using your computer so much as protecting the data on it. In some circumstances it is worth it to a business or government agency to just kill their lost machines than have someone walk off with valuable data.

[Edweird]

20. Heh. I give that feature a life expectancy of about 24 hours.

[bemildred]

24. I'm guessing this "kill switch" won't work unless the crook connects it to the internet.

And I'm guessing there are other ways to turn it off too.
This sounds like marketing bullshit for government suit-droids.

[melm00se]

25. if your PC

is a "business" class computer with embedded network management tools, it could always be shutdown remotely as soon as it touches (directly or via VPN) the owner's network.

those management tools have the power to update and control a PC, primarily to push software changes and the like, but also to bring the PC back up or down to do those changes (it is sometimes referred to as "wake on LAN")

[Lucian]

26. I can see this being used in the wrong way.

It doesn't take a genius to see that.

If I have to buy a new computer someday, I will NOT buy one that has this, or, if I have to buy one, I'll make sure it doesn't have a kill switch.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

27. "Kill Switch"? phht

I want an exploding dye packet in mine, that can be triggered remotely. Something like the bank uses to tag stolen money. Way more awesome than a mere "Kill Switch".

TSA might object to an exploding dye pack in every computer, but they have no sense of humor about things.

:hi:

[IDemo]

31. Having tested a Sandy Bridge system, I can tell you that a kill switch is redundant

They still have some legwork to do on this before it's ready for the market.

[sofa king]

40. Neat! Tell me about that, please!

As I understand it, Intel's graphical prowess is still last in the business, so I imagine putting one of those on the die is like tying an anchor around the processors' legs. But the small die process, low power draw, and overclocking potential interests me.

What do you think about it?

[PBS Poll-435]

33. AMD!

:D

[w4rma]

34. I won't be buying one of those, ever. (nt)

[dkofos]

36. Just another reason to not by intel

[Pavulon]

38. At this point you choices are pretty limited.

unless you are buying AIX Power chips for the frame in you house. AMD will probably release the same features. They have backdoors as well.

http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2009/06/more-thoughts-on-cpu-backdoors.html

[L0oniX]

43. So what port number are they using to give the kill order through?

What ever number that is can and will be blocked with an open source app ...one the Fed doesn't have a bypass key for.