> So what? How do you know Dell/HP/Whoever has not been forced by NSL letters to implement backdoors.
That is not necessary. Just get the shipping company to redirect the hardware to a facility that flashes the Intel ME with signed malware, reseals it and reships it without the recipient seeing anything different. That way fewer people need to know about it, which decreases the chance of detection:
Not even Intel needs to know if they are compromised successfully, just like Google did not need to know about those fiber taps between their datacenters. That means countries like China that have things being shipped to possible targets can do this too if their hackers gain the necessary secrets.
> That is not necessary. Just get the shipping company to redirect the hardware to a facility that flashes the Intel ME with signed malware, reseals it and reships it without the recipient seeing anything different. That way fewer people need to know about it, which decreases the chance of detection:
@iam-TJ 's point was in reference to the suggestion that Apple could pick the servers up directly from the manufacturer to avoid the interception while the servers are in the shipping company's hands.
In that case, the attack would not need much cooperation on the part of the OEM/ODM. The Intel chipsets could be flashed enroute to their manufacturing plant. They might not want the malware to go many places other than the intended target, which is why they would likely want some cooperation to ensure that they only make it to the intended target, which is why I say not much cooperation rather than no cooperation. Anyone from Apple inspecting the factory might not realize it.
I probably should elaborate that this attack assumes that the chipsets have internal flash. So far, I have only heard of this from a coreboot developer and upon doing Google searches, I cannot find any sources for that information. :/
That is not necessary. Just get the shipping company to redirect the hardware to a facility that flashes the Intel ME with signed malware, reseals it and reships it without the recipient seeing anything different. That way fewer people need to know about it, which decreases the chance of detection:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2083300/report-nsa-intercepts... https://libreboot.org/faq/#intelme
Not even Intel needs to know if they are compromised successfully, just like Google did not need to know about those fiber taps between their datacenters. That means countries like China that have things being shipped to possible targets can do this too if their hackers gain the necessary secrets.