March 29, 2024

SURVEILLANCE

The surveillance goes even further than Snowden has thus far disclosed. Over the years, I have accumulated considerable information about all the ways surveillance is conducted — by government, military, and the private sector. Just the names and acronyms alone would fills a couple pages. Amongst these is the following.

Intel’s CPUs now contain a second, internal stealth CPU that operates totally outside the operating system, contains all your HDD encryption passwords, and has its own back channel that can operate via cellular without Internet access. As long as power is connected–which nowadays is all the time since hard power switches have been replaced with soft ones–the stealth CPU has total control of the system and HDDs irrespective of the state your computer is in; can transmit the information without your LAN; and can turn on or off your computer.

What this means is, there is a backdoor into everything that contains an Intel CPU: computers, smartphones, tablets, networks, voting machines, industrial equipment, jets and other airplanes, ships, navigation, government computer systems, banking computer systems, military equipment, and so on.

Quite simply, we now live in a world where everything can be centrally monitored, controlled and shut down–gas stations, electricity, communications, electronic transactions, jets and missiles in flight, ships at sea, etc.–at any level of granularity: an individual, a family, a social network, a neighborhood, a city, a county, a region, a state, a nation, or even the world.

Be sure to watch the 2 videos.  More details of the surveillance technology included in the new chips can be found below:

According to PC Magazine, Intel’s “Sandy Bridge” microprocessor, due in 2011, will also include new vPro business features for IT administrators and workers, executives said Monday.

“Sandy Bridge” will be the next iteration in Intel’s “tick-tock” schedule of new microprocessor revisions and then process shrinks, with the chip scheduled for delivery in 2011. Intel executives disclosed more details of the chip – leaving out the key metrics, like clock speed – at the Intel Developer Forum here on Monday.

Performance improvement is still the core of the new Sandy Bridge chip, executives said. But security and manageability have always been the key attributes of Intel’s vPro business platform, “and I think these things still matter,” Jeff Marek, director of business client engineering for Intel, said in an interview.

From a security standpoint, the biggest addition Sandy Bridge will deliver will be the ability to remotely kill and restore a lost or stolen PC via 3G, Marek said. Previously, that capability, which delivers a “poison pill” that can remotely wipe the PC’s hard drive, was only available via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Now, if that laptop has a 3G connection, the PC can be protected, Marek said.

Videoconferencing sessions will also be secured via AES encryption; previously, only VoIP calls could be secured. Although this seems unlikely, Marek said that IT administrators, as well as customers with government contracts, have to think about the possible rather than the likely. “It’s a factor of government regulations; not so much is it feasible, but could someone do it,” he said.

From a manageability standpoint, Sandy Bridge now allows 1,900-by-1,200 resolution on the quad-core version of the chip. Users can also remotely switch the graphics from a low-power integrated version to a high-end, higher power discrete mode.

Finally, the Sandy Bridge architecture will support host-based configuration or host-based activation, Marek said. Users can also roll firmware updates backward and forward, Marek added.

Intel vPro

As published in Wikipedia, Intel vPro is a brand name for a set of PC hardware features. PCs with vPro have the following main elements: 1) vPro Enabled Processor 2) vPro Enabled Chip set 3)vPro Enabled BIOS.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

A vPro PC includes:

  • Multi-core, multi-threaded Intel Core i5 or Intel Core i7[8]
  • Intel Active Management Technology (Intel AMT), a set of hardware-based features targeted at businesses. / allow remote access to the PC for management and security tasks, when an OS is down or PC power is off.[1][4] Note that AMT is not the same as Intel vPro; AMT is only one element of a vPro PC.
  • Remote configuration technology for AMT, with certificate-based security. Remote configuration can be performed on “bare-bones” systems, before the OS and/or software management agents are installed.[1][4][9]
  • Wired and wireless (laptop) network connection.[1]
  • Intel Trusted Execution Technology (Intel TXT),[1][10][11][12] which verifies a launch environment and establishes the root of trust, which in turn allows software to build a chain of trust for virtualized environments. Intel TXT also protects secrets during power transitions for both orderly and disorderly shutdowns (a traditionally vulnerable period for security credentials).
  • Support for IEEE 802.1x, Cisco Self Defending Network (SDN), and Microsoft Network Access Protection (NAP) in laptops, and support for 802.1x and Cisco SDN in desktop PCs.[13][14] Support for these security technologies allows Intel vPro to store the security posture of a PC so that the network can authenticate the system before the OS and applications load, and before the PC is allowed access to the network.[10]
  • Intel Virtualization Technology, including Intel VT for memory, CPU, and Directed I/O, to support virtualized environments. Intel VT is hardware-based technology, not software-based virtualization. Intel VT lets you run multiple OSs (traditional virtualization) on the same PC or run a specialized or critical application in a separate space—a virtual PC on the physical system—in order to help protect the application or privacy of sensitive information.[10][15]
  • Execute Disable Bit that, when supported by the OS, can help prevent some types of buffer overflow attacks.[16]
  • Support for Microsoft Windows Vista, including Microsoft Windows Vista BitLocker with a Trusted Platform Module version 1.2 and Intel graphics support for Windows Vista Aero graphical user interface.[17][18]

Remote management

Intel AMT is the set of management and security features built into vPro PCs that makes it easier for a sys-admin to monitor, maintain, secure, and service PCs.[1] Intel AMT (the management technology) is sometimes mistaken for being the same as Intel vPro (the PC “platform”), because AMT is one of the most visible technologies of an Intel vPro-based PC.

Google Caught Spying, Again

Google got caught bypassing browser privacy setting in order to spy on millions of people without their knowledge or consent.

Share
Source: