cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/58764195

I was in the non-profit shop of a local charity. They accept donations of used computers then resell them to the public. The profit goes to charity. I asked for their oldest machine. It had an AMD chip from the 16h family. Thus, a spychip.

So their oldest machine was still too new for me. I asked why don’t you have anything older? They said the general public would not accept anything older, and so the shop also does not accept anything older. When machines are rejected, they go to a factory that destroys them and recovers the raw metals.

It’s sad to see that pre-spychip machines are being destroyed and that even 2nd-hand customers are being limited to anti-consumer spychip hardware.

  • evenwichtOP
    11·
    12 hours ago

    The evidence shows it takes a higher level of knowledge and more specialized knowledge to exploit the thing

    I see no evidence from you here. Yes, it requires a big brain. But it does not require a nation state as you originally claimed (which is a composition of many well-paid big brains dedicated to the work professionally). Cybercriminals are not limited to nation states. They operate in all scales, some organised, some not. The evidence shows that a bug in a driver for the spychip is all it takes:

    https://hackaday.com/2021/10/01/flaw-in-amd-platform-security-processor-affects-millions-of-computers/

    • Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      12 hours ago

      Man this is some fearmongering.

      Dude you are more likely to get viruses and exploited running the older hardware.

      I understand that vulnerabilities pop up, but at least the within a decade recent stuff gets patched.

      • evenwichtOP
        11·
        12 hours ago

        Man this is some fearmongering.

        The evidence is in front of you. Hackaday.com is publishing facts. These facts do not make you fearful yet you call them fearmongering.

        Dude you are more likely to get viruses and exploited running the older hardware.

        Nonsense. Vulns in the older hardware are mostly of the known variety. New hardware is rich in the unknown variety of vulns, which by their nature you don’t know about and cannot control for.

        I understand that vulnerabilities pop up, but at least the within a decade recent stuff gets patched.

        And new vulns get introduced. Even the patches themselves bring new vulns.

          • evenwichtOP
            1·
            1 hour ago

            “Fearmongering” was your response to the hackaday link – which supports my thesis not yours. Now you say it’s fine despite the contradiction with the narrative you try to peddle. You have some cognitive dissonance to sort out.

              • evenwichtOP
                1·
                31 minutes ago

                Of course it does. It spotlights the PSP infosec shitshow arising out of the AMD spychips. Also shows that a single individual researcher was able to discover it and w/some collaborators demo the exploit (no nation state actor or nation state budgets needed). You have failed to understand my position at a basic level if you can’t see this.