What can we learn from leaked Insyde's BIOS for Intel Alder Lake
It's a slightly biased analysis:<p>> <i>Can open source firmware projects benefit from leaked content?</i><p>> <i>Unfortunately, no or rarely.</i><p>> <i>Individuals or organizations that are not eligible to sign CNDA with Intel, such as open source firmware maintainers. Please note that open source firmware projects cannot directly benefit/reuse from leaked content due to legal risks</i><p>A direct reuse of everything is unlikely, but access to the material might lead to many interesting tools.<p>Simple example: undervolting (to save battery and reduce heat) was taken away by intel because plundervolt allowed attacks against the SGX enclave.<p>SGX has now been abandoned by Intel, but undervolting remains impossible.<p>If I ever get an Alder Lake, would I look for a way to enable that on my laptop? Yes!<p>Do I fear legal risks of altering the functionality of the hardware I purchased? No, thanks to the consequences of the first sale doctrine.<p>> <i>Binary blobs: It’s worth noting that in addition to the binary blobs required by various devices (Bluetooth BLE, WiFi, Ethernet, etc.), there are three different ACMs for security features: BiosGuard, BootGuard, and TXT</i><p>> <i>In addition, one thing should be noted that the key pairs required by BootGuard during provisioning stage is also included in the leaked content</i><p>So there's everything I would need to understand, patch then flash my own alterations? Great! I'm even more interested now!!<p>> <i>the data center should prepare</i><p>> <i>Short-term plan:</i><p>> <i>Security team and patch management team should work together to ensure critical devices are upgraded to the latest version</i><p>And IMHO the individual interested in future attempts to reclaim full ownership of their hardware should prepare in a very different way, by:<p>- downloading a copy of the current BIOS binary update (and the last few versions, just to be on the safe side)<p>- blocking BIOS updates ("capsules" etc) in the BIOS<p>- in the OS, uninstalling the tools that allow such updates (ex: Lenovo Vantage)<p>- ideally, even switching to Linux, as Microsoft can package drivers updates with the BIOS, and if it's that big one of these drivers may include code from Intel using unusual ways to forcefully  apply upgrades, that would bypass the methods you can control if the binary is delivered and run on your hardware (ex: Intel ME)<p>I really like Windows, and "security" in general, but I like the idea of having features like Undervolt even more!