Cyberpunk hardware considerations thread.

## PRELUDE ## I have been triggered. Really. I can't fight the autism, I absolutely must scratch this itch or I won't be able to sleep/think/eat. You may freely ban me for all I care. I have been triggered by repetitious statements that modern hardware becomes more and more inclined to implement all kinds of spying mechanisms and other privacy violating soykaf. ## BODY ## I want this to be a central thread where Lainons would gather their knowledge about hardware privacy wise. This is also a thread where Lainons may ask for help when they do not know what hardware to buy for their privacy needs. This thread is not focused on privacy, but on hardware that 'spies less'. Some of the topics that come to my mind: 1. How to properly choose a laptop that does not RAT (Remote Access Trojan) you out of the box? What if I need it to be performant enough to run a VM (say, Windows 7 and some basic things like M$ Word)? 2. Is it possible to assemble portable computer that would 'spy less'? How to get started? Pitfalls? 3. Same as 2, but for non portable PCs. 4. Non x86 platforms that 'spy less'? ## MY CONSIDERATIONS ## Which as you can image aren't because I'm the everlame. I am absolutely fuarrrking clueless when it comes to x86 hardware. Really no idea how to get something that would be Linux friendly, not openly backdoored and performant. It seems like cheap solutions tend to be less aggressive but this is merely a hunch and not based on anything. If cheap laptops really 'spy less', than you could buy that with the tradeoff that you're not likely to get anything done in a VM except opening the Windows Explorer (Win 7). But doing some Lainchan browsing should be fine, you might even be able to run 2K videos (on 1080p screen...). I speak from experience. They say ARM devices like raspberry are more friendly, but no virtualization and performance is likely to suffer, but how much exactly? What are other pitfalls in daily going? They say RISC-V may be a thing soon, but I really have no useful info on the topic. ## RELATED, SIMILAR## https://lainchan.org/%CE%A9/res/71066.html -- More of a vent thread, also, replies suggest that the readers know all kinds of abbreviations and colloquial terms, which is bad, because some of that terms cannot be easily googled. I think we live in era where we should consider uselessness of search engines and elaborate more. https://lainchan.org/%CE%A9/res/72199.html -- About choosing a good laptop, however, it does not seem to contain information relevant to hardware that 'spies less' https://lainchan.org/%CE%A9/res/68066.html -- Has some info on ARM devices, but does not seem to be much. ## OTHER ## pic: https://img3.gelbooru.com/images/57/b0/57b0b793fd09d139179d13636d515924.png https://lainchan.org/%CE%A9/res/70656.html -- Literally this thread, but does not seems to contain much info, except 'buy thinkpad'. Also more like a vent. https://lainchan.org/%CE%A9/res/62547.html -- Thinkpads. https://lainchan.org/%CE%A9/res/72087.html -- Not sure if it is even related. https://lainchan.org/%CE%A9/res/72199.html -- Cheap laptops.

>>73683 >1. How to properly choose a laptop that does not RAT (Remote Access Trojan) you out of the box? What if I need it to be performant enough to run a VM (say, Windows 7 and some basic things like M$ Word)? System 76, Tuxedo Computers, and Librem sell laptops which have IME (Intel Management Engine, the Trojan you’re probably referring to) either disabled or have the option of disabling it from the BIOS/EFI. Librem is the most security conscious company of the 3, but I have had trouble with their laptops breaking down, so I’m thinking of buying a Tuxedo next. >2. Is it possible to assemble portable computer that would 'spy less'? How to get started? Pitfalls? >3. Same as 2, but for non portable PCs. As far as I know, Librem is the only company that sells desktops and servers with IME disabled. They are expensive but they seem to be the only game in town. >4. Non x86 platforms that 'spy less'? It’s probably not going to be the raspberry pi, because that requires some binary blobs to boot.

>>73684 >System 76 I've heard people complaining about it. Unfortunately I don't remember why. Either price or some issues with functionality, latter is more likely. >Librem Seems to have pretty limited choice. I'm sort of addicted to 15'6 laptops because numpad! External keyboard for laptops is not very nice. And yeah, hardware is too high-end. I don't need i7 monster, i5 with a decent AMD GPU would do more than I've ever needed. >Tuxedo Computers https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/TUXEDO-Aura-15-Gen3.tuxedo This one looks like fun, but fuarrrking 840EUR. Not exactly on the cheap end. Yeah you first world guys might find this surprising but in low end countries this is a lot. 300-450EUR is more affordable. >It’s probably not going to be the raspberry pi, because that requires some binary blobs to boot. Did not know about it, thank you.

>>73685 If you want a computer without IME, and at a low price you are going to have to look at old stuff. I think AMD started backdooring in 2013 and intel in between 2006-2009. So you’d have to look at something before that. Maybe get a SPARCstation and load it with OpenIndiana?

>>73683 One of my posts was contained in a mentioned thread. I'm not sure what "spying less" would consist of. If you want to purchase a cpu that "spies less" just about any cpu will do. In the case of intel cpus, I've known people who actually monitored packets exiting devices with unaltered IMEs and never observed any packets being telemetered from the surveilled systems by the IME. Nor have I ever heard of a case where somebody was de-anonymized by authorities through exploitation of the IME, or anything to suggest that it's been done before. That is not to say that the IME couldn't be active on any computers on earth, it could very well be, but I've never heard of activity indicative of such being observed by anybody. It appears that the IME conducts some banal low level activities on computers, it doesn't do much. That's not to say that it could not do more, it very well could, and anybody capable of mitigating the threat it poses should do so, but at the same time the threat it poses is blown out of proportion. While the IME does run at the highest level of privilege on the system it isn't necessarily something that could be used to de-anonymize a specific person in the sense people have, where there's some mysterious omnipotent level of surveillance conducted against everybody through the IME and somebody can just be de-anonymized out of nowhere. The only way the authorities could begin to target somebody with the IME would be if it had telemetered sensitive data to a server under their control. That should be obvious but some people seem to forget or not think about how an attack would be mounted. Some old intel cpus don't have the ME, some do, people think that all pre-2008 intel cpus don't have the ME but that's not entirely true, some do, but everything past 2008 does. You can buy laptops flashed with me_cleaner from a few companies but you have to trust those companies to not be doing anything shady. I don't see a need for doing it, you are refusing to be independent and placing trust into random people to do something for you that you could do yourself. All you're doing is creating a greater potential for problems to arise. I wouldn't say that all modern hardware spies more, certainly not cpus. But more recent hardware is harder to secure in that you cannot effectively flash libre BIOSes or me_cleaner to them. I did hear of some malware on motherboards a bit ago but that wasn't put on the boards by an OEM iirc. There are several ways to disable or isolate the IME on a machine. So long as you have a cpu that is supported by coreboot and me_cleaner you can flash them to your cpu. Using a RockPi or RaspberryPi as a router should also isolate the IME. RaspberryPi has its own backdoor though so it'd probably be best to use a RockPi or something else. You could just use a laptop without any active hardware backdoors as a router. The IME uses onboard nic for networking, just using pci should prevent it from networking. An ethernet usb adapter should also isolate the IME, the usb controller connects to the pci bus before the cpu. As I have heard the IME wasn't designed to network over usb, and in the past people used eth-usb adapters to contain the IME, I assume it was because the adapter would not directly communicate with the cpu but perhaps they had some other reasoning. There's no evidence to suggest whether or not this still works. I don't think many people do this. There's not much of a reason to believe it wouldn't work now, the people designing these technologies can and do overlook things.

>>73683 >2. Is it possible to assemble portable computer that would 'spy less'? How to get started? Pitfalls? This is pretty much an impossible task because, 'spying', at the hardware level, is pretty much baseless accusations and conspiracy theory. Don't me wrong, there is plenty of spying its just bien passant stuff we are all aware of, and can mitigate to some extent on PC hardware. Its mostly software. Hardware is inflexible and low level. The vast majority of users don't care or understand and will not mitigate software surveillance. Software surveillance is flexible, cheap, and capable. Hardware is inflexible, expensive to design relative to software, and less capable. Why do it? If you disagree with this, post a detected example of this occurring. Detect it yourself even. Do packet captures, and look for signal. Don't expect me to believe that intel is doing using packet timing at the NIC level to encode your GPS or something when literally doing a curl to an HTTP endpoint is good enough. You should still buy System 76, or other Linux vendors to encourage the market to develop. Hell, even buying a PC today is a statement, because the smart phone market is overtaking it and less free. I'd like to see less x86, and ultimately more RISC-V for a more free market, but don't mistake freedom with privacy. Intel is very unlikely to be collecting directly from HW when they can just use analytic software preinstalled.

>>73687 Even if it’s not actively spying on you all the time it’s still a back door that could be used to: * Plant evidence * Steal your personal data and commit identity fraud * install other programs that monitor you >>73688 IME is software that is embedded in the processor. It is a version of Minix, a Unix like operating system. I would guess it can be updated, like other firmware.

>>73690 >IME Not saying that I like IME. I am saying there is no evidence that IME is being used to collect any kind of data or that IME sends any kind of observable signal. IME is a philosophical problem to me because it means ultimately, intel (cf. the user) owns the computer. However, there is no evidence that intel has used this power to collect and send any signal.

>>73691 You seem to be missing the point that although in many cases IME might not be monitoring in an obvious way, it can be used to do anything to your system without your authorization. So, it could be updated to spy on you, install software without your authorization, your computer could be remotely turned on and it’s disk contents downloaded while you are sleeping. IME makes this and other things possible.

>>73693 >You seem to be missing the point No, you missed the point. Hardware IME or not, could in principal do anything. Reversing HW to see what it can do is impractical. The point was that nothing has been observed, and everything about x86, intel, IME is all speculation. And so,when OP asks what laptop to buy to avoid spying at hw level, (s)he is asking what to do to minimize the number of angels dancing on the CPU. Nothing has been observed. No one knows anything about it. People who don't understand will post conspiracy theories about what IME can do. Well, you could have a custom firmware, or a custom keyboard controller, or just a custom chip special purpose for spying in functionality only - it could even be surface mount. How would you know? What kind of hw reversing are you prepared to do to ensure you r System 76, IME disabled laptop is actually not spying on you at a hw level? Its a fools game. Best you can do is use a trusted supply chain, trusted software, and perhaps monitor network transmissions.

>>73687 > The only way the authorities could begin to target somebody with the IME would be if it had telemetered sensitive data to a server under their control. What's so complex about it? Except that you can capture it. >So long as you have a cpu that is supported by coreboot and me_cleaner you can flash them to your cpu. I thought the whole motherboard must be supported? >router What's the point except that I theoretically can monitor traffic? The only way I see this can work is to connect through proxy/VPN tunnel so that all queries go to a limited number of IPs, so all others can be filtered with net_filter. I don't think it to be likely that IME is capable of adjusting to such cases. >just using pci should prevent it from networking. An ethernet usb adapter should also isolate the IME, the usb controller connects to the pci bus before the cpu. That would mean I have to rid my motherboard of the onboard nic, no? >>allOtherPosts >conspiracy What's the point of cyberpunk without conspiracy? Also, CPU is not the only hardware out there, what about everything else? >raspberry backdoored Elaborate, please?

>>73694 >trusted supply chain What's this?

>>73696 >>trusted supply chain >What's this? The only question that matters. Hardware Vendors have root, you have little ability to question them, and some ability to monitor. Really depends on your threat model. > Pervasive Mass Surveillance / Commercial Surveillance Basically any vendor is okay. No hardware has been observed to spy on anyone. You can't reverse engineering hardware, but you can observe network traffic out of band which provides limited auditing > glowing threat model Stop playing. Give up anyway. You have to pick a vendor to trust based upon your intelligence, understanding of product components and sourcing of components, and probably political factors. Custody of products until delivery matters. No reverse engineering is possible, because reverse engineering any specific hardware product tells you nothing about the next product, but does destroy what you examined. Limited auditing is possible because for advanced persistent attacks, attacks may show up and physically collect data from your hardware. No signal of any kind need be observed. Signals may be arbitrarily hard to find anyway. Example of this kind of behavior is saying, I don't want my cellular networks to contain huawei products. Or, I want US sourced parts from US based foundries. There isn't a trusted supply chain to hardware for US dissidents that I am aware of. There where however fake vendors for such things (cf. Anom). Of note though, Anom did the blase thing - no custom hardware, no strange OOB signaling. All done in software, and observable network traffic. So, if you think you need this kind of threat model, your probably wrong.

>>73694 It seems you are trying to railroad this conversation into whether or not IME has been "observed" spying on users. The whole point of it to be there is to have a backdoor that cannot be closed because it runs at a higher privilege than any other code in the system. It can access any memory location to read or write as long as it's there. There is not legitimate reason for something like IME to be there, because under what circumstances would it benefit the consumer. None whatsoever! It is there to do harm. This is not theoretical. Intel admits that it is there, and it does not have a legitimate reason. Having IME means that the intelligence agencies, and police of every major country have complete access to your computer, when and where they feel like it. Also, possibly criminals and maybe anyone who is wanting to pay enough money. This is a very serious and very important backdoor that many want to close for good reason. >>73697 >Stop playing. Give up anyway Can you make it any more obvious that you feel threatened by people wanting to close this big, obvious backdoor? Its almost like it threatens billions of dollars of investment by your intelligence agency...

What about AMD? Why do you only talk about Intel? Also now that my autistic compulsion has eased, what choice do we have anyway? You need a fuarrrking computer and when choosing between Chinese Communist Party rootkited phone or CISA rootkited phone and an x86 laptop, it occurs to me the latter is less evil. Is the CPU the only concern?

>>73703 Once you get rid of Intel ME or AMD PSP, next step is changing out proprietary BIOS. You can do this in one step with coreboot. Manufacturers like Lenovo often inject .exe files into the OS with the bios. https://www.windowscentral.com/some-lenovo-pcs-reload-software-even-clean-windows-install-there-fix Network adapters are next; you need either ethernet drivers with no blobs, or wireless drivers with no blobs. It's pretty easy to find old atheros cards supported by ath9k: https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k/devices HDD and SSD storage also include a controller chip. Those are also another "computer". idk if there has been any research on whether those are concerning though.

Libreboot'd x200 will cover needs. (The libreboot bit is the most important part). Coreboot'd systems if you are ok with microcode blobs or other blobs in your firmware. (generally more options and can be obtained for cheaper or with more processing power) then you need only get trusted install media (most Gnu Linux distros will be fine) but if you are wanting to go the extreme route lookup live-bootstrap

It would be an immensely good deed if somelain elaborated on some specific laptop (or PC) models that fit the criteria of disabled IME (or AMD equivalent) and mitigated network card. Because looking at coreboot specified distributors the choice is very limited and thus price range very rigid. Maybe there's more flexibility in choice both price and performance wise? It would also be immensely nice if somebody dropped in info on GPUs.

>>73703 >Chinese Communist Party rootkited phone Waiting to see this much-touted gem of sinophobic propaganda be supported with some real goddamn evidence. No, I won't simply take it at a matter of course that the Chinese government is installing backdoors in hardware intended for Western consumption, given the enormous incentives for hostile Western spook agencies to make this garbage up to justify their new cold war with China (and keep people using their own backdoor'd, spook-approved devices).

>>73723 >spook-approved devices are only given to spooks. Realistically the backdoor is mainly there to be used against chinese nationals. Remember a lot of those chips are sold internally as well, China has a huge middle class now. Anyway, either it's from mainland China and has Chinese backdoors or it's from Taiwan and it has American backdoors, or both. Fact of the matter is your phone is backdoored.

>>73703 The CCP being evil shouldn't prevent you from using their hardware. It's a good thing that the US doesn't generally have access to at least one supply chains hardware manufacturers. We should celebrate that westerners potentially have an option to avoid compromise here. I will never visit China or North Korea. I don't care if either government has complete spyware access to all my data because it doesn't have any consequence for me. But it does have the benefit that my own government will not have access to my data and machine. It is still creepy on a psychological level that at least someone is probably watching at all times. But if that someone is powerless and I'll never meet them it's a lot less concerning.

>>73703 >it occurs to me the latter is less evil unless you're chinese, no it isn't as someone who lives in neither america nor china i'd much rather have my data held by chinese companies/govt than by american companies/govt since there's much more cooperation between glowies from my country and american glowies

>>73770 >>73778 very interesting way of thinking. it may struck you as surprising, but if a party has your full profile then any party having enough money has it as well. if china doesn't need your data for it's totalitarism purposes since you're in different jurisdiction it will simply sell your data for benefit and keep the profile just in case china manages to conquer the world. i really can't relate to this mindset of being a slave to a master that seems to be farther thus less obtrusive.

>>73781 You haven't yet done anything to establish that those dastardly Chinamen are in fact doing the things you're asserting.

>>73785 I’m not him but when I lived in china, the government decided who you were allowed to talk to through chat apps. Met people in person with people whom we had agreed previously to talk to through messages or WeChat, and were able to confirm that messages often didn’t get through. Later was living in Germany a few years back. Decided to buy some bullion anticipating hard times ahead. Did this very discreetly, traveled by public transport, changed clothes several times during the trip. The only way anyone could have found what I was up to was through my Apple iPhone (made in china ofc). I was conscious of this but maps etc, seemed too convenient to leave at home. As I am arriving home, at the same time I usually arrived from the gym, wearing the same clothes, and the same back pack as usual, the sirens sound and a couple of cops pop off out of nowhere. They threaten me and insist that they have to look into my back pack because we are near a border zone bla bla. They managed to confuse me about my rights, and finally I relented and allowed them to look in my backpack. The silver I was carrying there was a decoy anyways. They seemed to be truly disappointed that it wasn’t the drugs or body parts or whatever they thought they were looking for. They even returned the silver (only after showing them the receipt). It goes to show that they’re spying on you all the time. If the AI or heuristics or whatever show that you are up to something they’ll take some action to screw up over.

>>73683 An interesting note about this topic is that there is a manufacturer that promises no closed source binary blobs. It’s Raptor Computing, and it sells IBM POWER 9 systems. The website indicates that the company seems to still be in business. Their prices are in line with the prices of 1990’s workstations. They actually expect somebody to pay 5k+ for a developer workstation with 4 CPUs and 8 gigs of RAM. Those are similar specs as my raspberry pi which costs 1/25 as much. The best thing about their website is their FAQ, which has a relatively deep but easy to understand regarding cpus, binary blobs, etc https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/faq.html

If your a paranoid retard who's borderline tech illiterate, what's the freest possible computer you could buy/build? I've heard nice things about raptor computing.

>>73793 > I've heard nice things about raptor computing. Please share

>>73793 >raptor Also know as the company forcing you to use OpenBMC (made by MS, Facebook, Intel, Google and IBM) in the boot chain?

>>73801 That is in fact the same Raptor Computing Systems. Wow. Interesting. The corruption seems to spread everywhere!

>>73793 >freest possible computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adding_machine

сan anybody fuarrrking tell me already AMD of Intel? both have backdoors, some of which were discovered as meltdown/zenbleed. but still the question remains. AMD Ryzens are considered better than corresponding intels both performance- and price-wise. or at least so i think. so why nobody even mentioned AMD? wtf!?

>>73822 AMD's version of IME is called PSP. Nobody sells AMD systems with PSP deactivated, nor does there seem to be any information out there on how to turn it off. For Intel, though there seems to be information how you can turn it off, using hardware and software. Not necessarily safe or straightforward by any means, so for that reason some may choose to buy systems with IME deactivated which are available from several vendors. It's especially sad that AMD's PSP can't be turned off (as far as it's publicly known), because like you say AMD has better price/performance than Intel.

>>73823 i've got your point, thanks. poor user like me doesn't have money for disabled IME anyway so i guess i'll have to forget the privacy thing for a while (or forever, lol). on the other side i don't think i should care because it doesn't look like they break into computers left and right and i'm a worthless nobody so who even cares. just think about it, soldiers use phones, carry them in battles and yet it doesn't look like anyone use the phones as means of (at least subtle) intelligence. it means that the thing is reserved for something more sophisticated than discovering what kind of porn you prefer.

>>73683 https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/e6400.html <= $50 on ebay

>>73684 Can we add StarLabs to this list. They are the only ones in this kind of space that offers a truly unique option and not just a clevo rebrand.

>>73831 >What if I need it to be performant enough to run a VM (say, Windows 7 and some basic things like M$ Word)?>>73824 >just think about it, soldiers use phones, carry them in battles and yet it doesn't look like anyone use the phones as means of (at least subtle) intelligence. Typically in an active warzone either the cell network is offline, or those phones have specialized radios with specialized encryption that don't blare your location 24/7. Anyway. Don't give up on privacy. Just do what you can with the resources available to you.

>>73833 >Typically in an active warzone either the cell network is offline, or those phones have specialized radios with specialized encryption that don't blare your location 24/7. Guys literally turned on Ukrainian hymn from youtube while hanging the flag in an area they didn't control just to piss off the other side. Yet nobody located their phones.

turned on my laptop to discover battery is on zero. this has never happened before and the battery seems to be OK. i'm super anxious now. i turned it off yesterday it couldn't discharge. motherfuckers, there's nothing of value in my system stop searching around!!!

>>73837 >on YouTube You are certain they didn't have it downloaded to their phones?

>>73841 they did it on video. here's a rough translation. -- turn on hymn, we must turn on hymn -- /to his comrade/:oh yes. /to viewers:/ mobile internet is just fine in here *blah blah* *turns on one video* -- bruh this is remix we need a normal hymn video *tries another video* -- oh this is the right one, now let's raise the flag! inb4 video request video was on social media which i don't use. was shown it by friends on an occasion. the point is, no one seems to be going to use the backdoors for convenience/at leisure. it feels more like a thing to turn to when saving life idk. big politics bullshit. starlab minipc looks interesting to me. N200 is not a particularly impressive thing but random benchmarks from DDG suggest it's faster than my current intel, and price is more or less adequate. the only problem is that with the discounted cost of $488.00 fuarrrking USA USD DOLLARS you still have to buy a nice 1080p screen and as a laptop guy i'm real clueless. any suggestions? plus you need a normal HDD 1-2 TB because SSD is meme and impossible-to-erase. let's say it's WD20SPZX or ST2000LM015, another $60USD. life is expensive

>>73837 I wouldn’t carry a cell phone if I was in a war zone. Look at what happened to this guy, outside a war zone >>73787

>>73845 fuarrrk it i'm confused

>>73844 >don’t worry guy >access to your cell phone is safely in Jewish hands >trust me because I was shown this one video I can’t provide for you >we wouldn’t spy on you >certainly not to kill you >heck even a Palestinian in gaza would be safe using a cell phone >there is absolutely no evidence to prove otherwise

>>73848 keep seething, none of your statements were even implied

btw your stupid screenshot isn't even related because you don't need to hack into a phone to reveal it's location through a call. everything you need is a good radio station. >>video I can’t provide for you i didn't ask you to believe me though. if you really care video was recorded somewhere on dachas near Oleshki a month ago or so. good luck searching. i'd start with something like 'ЗСУ український флаг дачі Олешки', but can't care less, sorry.

>>73851 > don't need to hack into a phone to reveal it's location through a call.

>>73852 >doesn't know that 2G/3G can be easily hijacked by just anyone

>>73853 >they would spy in on conversations >but they wouldn't use the backdoors they have built on your cell phone to get other kinds of info Why wouldn't they? Do you think ethics will stop them? Do you think the backdoors they have built in to the cell phones are somehow unusuable?

>>73854 i have no idea i just share my observations which are open to criticism. if you want my opinion, so far people stubbornly do not care about the spying thing, because they are dumb. this mainly stands on the lack of any evidence as was told in this thread already. once there's evidence of backdoors it might have some unexpected consequences, you know what i mean. using these backdoors in a massive war zone is 100% granted to prove their existence or so it seems to me.

>>73858 You need to *prove* the security holes exist? Why? It’s absolutely trivial. Just search for androids or iOS security advisories. In many cases those may not be intentional security holes, but they are nevertheless… You can even make your own personal security holes into them phones if you wanted to. Steps: 1. Make your own app with your special code secretly or openly added in 2. Pay marketing company to promote app and get it installed in millions of cell phones 3. Profit

>>73858 https://www.kicksecure.com/wiki/Mobile_Phone_Security#Mobile_Devices_Backdoors_in_Most_Phones_Tablets_Etc

>>73859 i mean backdoors programmed by vendors. as long as there is no precedent the masses will never even listen to you they're absolutely retarded i know by experience

>>73848 >>73852 We're getting a bit off-topic here, but I wouldn't use war propaganda as the basis of an argument.

>Cell phone produces signal >Triangulate signal from 2 separate observation points >It's across the front line >Artyem, do dance for camera! >40mm pomf~ You disappoint me in this thread, Lain. Literal dipshits with 0 intel could figure this out with a blued razor in the field as long as the two obs are in sync with NTP. Not only are we talking about a first world military, they're being funded and directed by US assets in certain operational capacities; You can demod cell signals with a walkie talkie and a Pi, and the entire battle space is only 3-5 cell towers. This is soykaf 12 year olds do because it's fun.

test lorem ipsum n soykaf like thatbim testin yo !

1. Take Chinese android phone. 2. Turn off internet for 12-24 hours 3. Turn it on again. 4. See 0.1-1M going somewhere. They don't even hide it. Pity I don't have knowledge/resources to monitor it more closely.

>>73683 >How to properly choose a laptop that does not RAT (Remote Access Trojan) you out of the box? What if I need it to be performant enough to run a VM (say, Windows 7 and some basic things like M$ Word)? VMs aren't that good for privacy. If you say for example want to play old Windows games, that Linux just can't run, airgapped machines are much better. That being said, the best option currently is a Thinkpad X230 with QubesOS. X230 can be corebooted and run with IME disabled. It works flawlessly with QubesOS. Look into Qubes if you need virtualization for security. You can create VMs on demand in seconds with no network access, routed all through Tor or something else entirely. It's a great solution. >>Non x86 platforms that 'spy less'? StarFive Vision 2 and Lichee Pi 4 (?) are both relatively cheap RISC-V (an open ISA) SBCs that has enough processing power to be compared to a Thinkpad. They run Linux (Gentoo, Debian), OpenBSD and NetBSD. >>73684 I wouldn't trust some startup that promises security and privacy for hardware. Probably Librem and System76 have no bad intentions, but LEA will always look out for people who are interested in super-hacker machines that are extra private and secure. Why wouldn't they? It just seems sketchy to me and kinda naive to assume they haven't been glowed already, because why wouldn't they? I recommend buying an old dell laptop from somebody in person, going to that guy in person and paying with cash. There are enough platforms and local markets where you can buy old used laptops from a private person with cash. Get your old dell laptop from some old grandpa, thank him wholeheartedly, then disable ME and install coreboot.

Is there any real advantage or disadvantage to hardware encryption? Encrypted drive as means of encrypting the data and hardware encrypted keyboard that encrypts the keystrokes.

>>74207 Hardware encryption provides an unmodifiable trusted base baked in stone. It’s faster and frees the cpu from the burden or encryption. Some kinds of randomness are only possible in hardware.

>>74206 >VMs aren't that good for privacy but really good for running windows software that doesn't run on wine and isn't heavy enough to throttle my lap in VM. that's the point. it's kinda 300-500$USD cheaper

>>73683 >They say RISC-V may be a thing soon, but I really have no useful info on the topic. If you're going to get into alternate ISAs, get into them for the right reason. Just because the ISA is "open" doesn't mean the implementations are open. There are likely going to be coprocessors like the CSME in good RISC-V CPUs like there are in ARM right now. Additionally, the openness of RISC-V has its own downsides, such as allowing manufacturers to implement proprietary instructions in their CPUs. At least with ARM, you know what you're signing up for. RISC-V may end up in the same situation, with multiple closed ISAs based off it and sold by a single vendor. We can already see this with SiFive and its use of its own proprietary vector instructions in addition to the V instructions. Intel is also interested in RISC-V, presumably because they can continue to add in their own extensions which they wouldn't be allowed to do if they just licensed cores from ARM. In short: Get into RISC-V because you are interested in learning about the ISA itself, not because of false promises of "openness."

>>73832 Their website is cloudflared, reason enough to not mention.

>>74213 > There are likely going to be coprocessors like the CSME in good RISC-V CPUs like there are in ARM right now pretty eye-opening statement Lainon, thanks. I was actually considering getting into RISC-V once they got more powerful and accessible on my country because i wanted to stop using things with Intel ME or similar systems. Yet, it still kinda seems like a good platform for me, because i care about CPUs with very low wattage

>>74213 what a heartbreaking post. maybe it's really time for a license that would handle proprietary implementations or something like that. not sure how to go about it though. gpl v3 seems to be doing something in that spirit, but not sure how much it is applicable to hardware. it is really dumb how open works get abused because they are open. openness should be universal, so that it can't be leeched off, but only enhanced.

>>73683 >4. Non x86 platforms that 'spy less'? https://www.pine64.org/ https://pine64.com/ they have arm computers for which you can build uboot with trustzone backdoor disabled (not all of them, check before buying), maybe riscv computers are also good

>>73684 >Librem people say that they are dishonest company, that many users never received their phone

I had a good shot with Meizu phones back then because bankrupt companies do not put much effort into spying. There wouldn't be a problem, except I foresee the need for an update and I really wonder. I am absolutely going to try my best to avoid even coming near soykaf like Xiaomi that's a complete fuarrrking undisguised malware. Do you have any considerations? Of course I am fuarrrking poor. Middle range prices are the absolute maximum I am maybe able to afford and that with exceptions. Unleash your cyberpunk on me!

Consume you want, but x86 is a fundamentally flawed blackbox, even at its core ARM is better, but it's still proprietary, and Intel ME/AMD PSP-esque "features" CAN and WILL be implemented at the vendor's discresssion RISC-V is the only way out

>>76277 god im fuarrrking tired of this meme, ISAs dont matter for a reason of security, only the chip designers ARM is a clusterfuck, they standardized nothing, most arm processors have a locked bootloader, apple has a chip that is not only comparable to ME/PSP, they don't have a standardized boot sequence, thats why if you go to Gentoo's website, they have a list of ARM-based devices that were able to be installed RISC-V is the same thing, why would someone think it would be different? All the problems of ARM apply to them The "Openness" of RISC-V is for the manufacturer, not the consumer. you don't matter