Can Kaspersky protect against IME issues/threats?

[Andrzej]

I know there has been a lot of talk about Intel 'deep embedding' abilities into the IME - and that they are now in a situation where China might back Intel CPUs. As the new CPUs/motherboards have been launching recently, there have been a lot of updates to the various board's BIOSes and IME versions. If there was a threat at this level, would it be found by Kaspersky?

[Wesly.Zhang]

Hello,

At present, China is developing its own CPU and display processors (GPU). In the future, it may completely replace a series of technologies that cannot be controlled by the mainstream Intel, AMD or NVIDIA. Now, the main ones are Loongson CPU and Moore Threads GPU and other manufacturers. In the field of informatization, we are gradually realizing independent and controllable supply chain and technology, as a possible "parallel replacement" of technology reserves. That is, the "Plan-B" plan.

Instead of solving this problem, it is better to solve the problem at the source, that is, not using their CPU. However, different CPU instruction sets will be different, which requires the development of a complete set of operating systems to support this CPU and all its hardware support. This requires an industry and a software ecosystem, but that's a later story, I don't think this operating system will be used abroad. After all, there are many people who don't believe in China's technology or have a sense of crisis, but time will tell the truth.

[Wesly.Zhang]

But what do you say Kaspersky Lab can do, as a software product, in fact, the protection capacity is limited. It can't find unknown CPU firmware vulnerabilities and do anything about CPU firmware. After all, IME is a firmware system inside the CPU that runs completely autonomously. It's more concerned about why Intel is using this firmware system, which is a very strange thing.

[Andrzej]

I guess they thought about the benefits of 'Wake on Lan' etc, but it does create a strange situation from a security point of view. The new 3nm chips being made in China are definitely interesting - and the same for the Harmony OS 🙂