Expert Says NSA Have Backdoors Built Into Intel And AMD Processors [View all]

[AgingAmerican]

CHRISTOPHER JOYE AND PAUL SMITH

One of Silicon Valley’s most respected technology experts, Steve Blank, says he would be “surprised” if the US National Security Agency was not embedding “back doors” inside chips produced by Intel and AMD, two of the world’s largest semiconductor firms, giving them the possibility to access and control machines.

...

The claims come after The ­Australian Financial Review revealed that computers made by Chinese firm Lenovo are banned from the “secret” and “top secret” ­networks of the intelligence and defence services of Australia, the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand because of concerns they are vulnerable to being hacked.

If correct, the allegations would raise the stakes in a growing cyber cold war, and fuel claims that US snooping leaves the Chinese in the shade.

http://www.afr.com/p/technology/intel_chips_could_be_nsa_key_to_ymrhS1HS1633gCWKt5tFtI

Another expert, Jonathan Brossard, who works in the field of Penetration Testing says he has demonstrated proof of this concept and proved what is almost an undetectable and incurable back door. He did so at last years black hat conference and has arrived at the same conclusion as Steve Blank. This is all made possible by the fact Intel and AMD can update the microcode on the small reprogrammable part of the CPU which gets updated every time a Microsoft update is installed. Thus the NSA can theoretically be part of this microcode and could be involved in exploiting it since they work so closely with Microsoft and other technology companies.

http://www.eteknix.com/expert-says-nsa-have-backdoors-built-into-intel-and-amd-processors/

This means that encryption is meaningless. They have pre-encryption access to everything.

The hits just keep on coming.