this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
53 points (98.2% liked)

Technology

42977 readers
334 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
alyaza@beehaw.org
TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org
gyrfalcon@beehaw.org
rs5th@beehaw.org
SemioticStandard@beehaw.org
TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social
coldredlight@beehaw.org
remington@beehaw.org
53
Europe built sovereign clouds to escape US control. Then forgot about the processors (www.theregister.com)
submitted 1 day ago by Kissaki@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
11 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Intel ME and AMD PSP: The silicon layer nobody certifies

About cloud sovereignty and the often-ignored and unknown on-CPU management engine running below the OS and BIOS.

The article is quite long; it explains how CPUs run firmware that can include remote management over the network, and can be running even when the OS is not. They can be vulnerable to supply chain attacks and firmware replacements. Because it's on hardware, the firmware with open security vulnerabilities is often not updated.

Regarding cloud, the French SecNumCloud is a framework for cloud infrastructure security requirements. It doesn't cover these hardware attack vectors specifically but may mitigate risks through surrounding practices and isolation.

In conclusion, even a cloud provider that meets SecNumCloud must be asked whether and how they manage CPU management engine attack vectors.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] technohacker@programming.dev 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

One usual use case is for IPMI-style server management, being able to remotely monitor and interact with the machine before even the BIOS is ready, so particularly more relevant to server deployments. For example, adjusting BIOS settings over a dedicated management LAN for several thousand rack servers

[–] Feyter@programming.dev 2 points 4 hours ago

ok so it's the classic compfort vs. security... kind of.