Security nightmares are going Low-Level
Java and Flash have been and still are terrible 3rd party components when it comes to the security of our PCs. While from a functional point of view they were rocket science in the ’90 (anybody who remember ActiveX would agree) nowadays they are sluggish, weakly integrated, rectangles in our web pages. Finally both Oracle and Adobe are planning to kill them, as they are anachronistic given the abilities of modern HTML5 browsers:
Everything good till now. But.. There is a not-so-new frightening trend on the rise: the presence of growing complexity in the hardware layer as shown recently in Intel’s CPUs by their Manageability Engine (think about an HP iLO integrated in the CPU).
- Intel x86s hide another CPU that can take over your machine (you can’t audit it)
- Intel ME (Manageability engine) Huffman algorithm
Your PC cannot even boot without Intel ME! Ready to switch back to a Core Duo?
–Francesco Ongaro
http://www.isgroup.biz/