Secure PC
https://starlabs.systems/pages/laptops Here's a new PC coming on the market. Its Unique Selling Point is that they have somehow disabled Intel's management engine. That's the secret "manager" inside your computer which is, we all assume, how the Black Hats spy on you. This thing ain't cheap -- the minimal version is $700, and the version I'd want is nearly $1000 -- but I don't know of any other way to get anything close to this kind of security.
Purism claims to offer better security, but it's not obvious what makes their PureOS better than other Linux distributions. https://puri.sm/products/librem-mini/
Meanwhile, I've found that Tuxedo Computers offers laptops which allow the Intel Management Engine to be disabled.Here's another laptop manufacturer that offers the ability to disable the Intel Management Engine, as well as the webcam and WLAN. Better yet, they'll install your choice of 5 different versions of Linux, including my personal fav Manjaro.
System76 has machines built with coreboot firmware, which disables the Intel Management Engine by default. They do their best to disable the IME, but my guess is they can't get it all. They can only use whatever bits of information that Intel chooses to publish, which is far too little to have any guarantee of security.
According to libreBoot about the only way you're going to get real security with AMD or Intel is to have an old chip. They publish a page listing various sources of computers featuring libreBoot.
Here's an interesting quote from Jim Stone's page:
I have definitely discovered an auto-destruct on Intel plaforms where the processor (or some other component) is told to send out high voltage spikes to destroy the entire motherboard while the computer is "off" How could a processor do that in such a tiny space? EASY: If it clocks at over a ghz, the part that would do that could easily be a fraction of a millimeter in size. Frequency matters, the lower the frequency the bigger the parts have to be.
They probably did not expect me to figure out what happened and did not want this info "out there". So when I went to type this, they attacked the AMD laptop I have been using for 10 years and the keyboard, which has never glitched in 10 years suddenly started glitching and it overheated and shut off when it has never done that before. Obviously they don't want this posted (which is why I came right out and said it in the opening line) Here is how I discovered this:
I went to try to start the Celeron G4390 after giving the spooks what I figured would be "enough time" to un-brick it. I had it sitting in the motherboard box with nothing attached to the motherboard except processor and ram. Since there was no power switch, I used a jumper to hit the ATX power pins and the jumper got hot (instantly) and I got shocked. That's IMPOSSIBLE, no motherboard has voltages that high so I immediately grabbed a meter and checked the ATX power pins (to see if the power supply did that) from the back side of the ATX connector with it still plugged into the motherboard and there was nothing at all there except for the 5 volts that is used for the ATX start voltage (and obviously Intel's Vpro tech)
All I have is a basic meter (I really should have a scope) but whatever, at least the meter is not total crap and I checked out on the motherboard, and with ONLY the 5 volts from the ATX power system somehow, out on the motherboard, the meter was reading 63 volts. If I measured from the power on pins on the motherboard (which are obviously separately managed and not hooked directly to ATX on) - from them to power supply ground I could see 63 volts but on the actual ATX power connector, when read only back to the connector, there was only the power on 5 volts and the rest showed nothing. Obviously there's some SERIOUS auto destruct capabilities if that can happen. Obviously CorVpro security is not B.S., the device really does get bricked. Since I have only a basic DMM meter I don't know what the actual voltage was, it could be assumed it was spikes with a short duty cycle and unknown frequency so with an ordinary DMM it is impossible to know the actual peak voltage was. But I do know this now: Intel based platforms come with a high voltage auto destruct. There's no way in hell that voltage could have been there any other way. Surprisingly it did not back feed into the power supply, at the ATX pins (when measured from pin to pin only) there was nothing anywhere except the power switch voltage of 5 volts.
They probably did not expect me to figure out what happened and did not want this info "out there". So when I went to type this, they attacked the AMD laptop I have been using for 10 years and the keyboard, which has never glitched in 10 years suddenly started glitching and it overheated and shut off when it has never done that before. Obviously they don't want this posted (which is why I came right out and said it in the opening line) Here is how I discovered this:
I went to try to start the Celeron G4390 after giving the spooks what I figured would be "enough time" to un-brick it. I had it sitting in the motherboard box with nothing attached to the motherboard except processor and ram. Since there was no power switch, I used a jumper to hit the ATX power pins and the jumper got hot (instantly) and I got shocked. That's IMPOSSIBLE, no motherboard has voltages that high so I immediately grabbed a meter and checked the ATX power pins (to see if the power supply did that) from the back side of the ATX connector with it still plugged into the motherboard and there was nothing at all there except for the 5 volts that is used for the ATX start voltage (and obviously Intel's Vpro tech)
All I have is a basic meter (I really should have a scope) but whatever, at least the meter is not total crap and I checked out on the motherboard, and with ONLY the 5 volts from the ATX power system somehow, out on the motherboard, the meter was reading 63 volts. If I measured from the power on pins on the motherboard (which are obviously separately managed and not hooked directly to ATX on) - from them to power supply ground I could see 63 volts but on the actual ATX power connector, when read only back to the connector, there was only the power on 5 volts and the rest showed nothing. Obviously there's some SERIOUS auto destruct capabilities if that can happen. Obviously CorVpro security is not B.S., the device really does get bricked. Since I have only a basic DMM meter I don't know what the actual voltage was, it could be assumed it was spikes with a short duty cycle and unknown frequency so with an ordinary DMM it is impossible to know the actual peak voltage was. But I do know this now: Intel based platforms come with a high voltage auto destruct. There's no way in hell that voltage could have been there any other way. Surprisingly it did not back feed into the power supply, at the ATX pins (when measured from pin to pin only) there was nothing anywhere except the power switch voltage of 5 volts.
So far he has had better luck with his new AMD processor.
