Intel Management Engine: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:29, 19 March 2017

Uses of the Management Engine

The Intel Management Engine (abbreviated "ME") is a CPU which permits out of band management of the computer. See the Wikipedia AMT article for example use cases.

Freedom and security issues

The code that is running inside the management engine is proprietary and signed
The management engine CPU has access to a lot of things, see "ME physical capabilities" for more details.

Where

Board	Firmware	Microarchitecture	ME location and physical capabilities	ME restrictions
Lenovo X60/X60s/X60T	None. <ref name="nic-amt">The Ethernet controller is capable of running some fimrwares( like AMT 1.0), but the hardware is not configured to do it on that machine. So no firmwares are loaded. See Intel_82573_Ethernet_controller for more details.</ref>	I945 + ICH7	Inside the ethernet controller, disabled: no Ethernet controller fimrware. <ref name="nic-amt"></ref>	Disabled: No Ethernet controller fimrware. <ref name="nic-amt"></ref>
Lenovo T60		I945 + ICH7
Lenovo x200	AMT	GM45/GS45	The ME is inside the PCH, it: Has access to the computer's memory/RAM Controls the computer's original networking adapters	Signed firmware The ME can be disabled (no Fimrware is run by it).
Lenovo x201	AMT	Nehalem		Signed firmware If ME firmware is absent, the computer freezes about 30min after boot.
Packard Bell EasyNote LM85 (MS2290)	AMT?	Nehalem
Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook	me.bin	Sandy Bridge		Signed firmware
Samsung Series 3 Chromebox	me.bin
Lenovo t520	AMT
Google/HP Pavilion Chromebook 14	me.bin	Ivy Bridge		Signed firmware
Google Chromebook Pixel	me.bin
Google/Acer C7 Chromebook	me.bin
Google/Lenovo Thinkpad X131e Chromebook	me.bin
Lenovo t530	AMT
Lenovo x230	AMT
Kotron KTQM77/mITX	AMT?
Google/Acer C720 Chromebook	?	Haswell		Signed firmware
Google/HP Chromebook 14	?	Haswell		Signed firmware

Why there is no replacement for it yet

Replacing the ME firmware is not that easy because:

The ME bootrom checks the firmware signature.
On recent chipset its RAM region is locked while it is allocated.
Power glitches(by the ec) while the ME is checking its firmware is probably not practically doable.

So even if some people partially documented some ME firmware format, there is very few probability of having a free software replacement for it one day.

However coreboot also support other systems than the ones with recent intel CPU/chipsets. The List of supported mainboard list some of them.

Some of theses don't have a management engine.
Some ships without it enabled(that means that the hardware is not used).
Some ships with it enabled, but it can be disabled not to use it at all, like on the Lenovo x200.

Replacing ME with smaller versions

Most PCs ship a 5MiB version of ME firmware. It is possible to use a smaller version (2MiB), but you have to make sure that it matches the chipset you are running on. You may want to use a smaller version to increase the maximum payload size by 3MiB. Search on the web for BIOS updates of different vendors with the same chipset and extract the ME using available tools. Once you found a smaller ME, you have to update your Intel flash descriptor and decrease the region that is used for ME.

References

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 == Uses of the Management Engine ==
-The management engine(Often abreviated ME) is a CPU which permits [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-band_management Out of band] management of the computer. See the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Technology#Using_Intel_AMT Wikipedia AMT article] for example use cases.
+The Intel Management Engine (abbreviated "ME") is a CPU which permits [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-band_management out of band management] of the computer. See the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Technology#Using_Intel_AMT Wikipedia AMT article] for example use cases.
 == Freedom and security issues ==