Hello bancfc,
Friday, December 23, 2016, 9:13:16 PM, you wrote:
boo> Hi,
boo> Seeing that many of you know a lot about Intel's ME I wanted to ask a boo> couple of things if its ok.
boo> * Is the ME network accessible on all Intel chips or only the vPro ones boo> with AMT?
IIRC there were some mobile variants which had access to the wireless 3G chip (for Anti-Theft) but AFAIK this functionality has been dropped. From what I've seen in the common firmwares, only the corporate/AMT (5MB) firmwares include the networking stack.
boo> * I saw an interesting take on this in the link below, instead of the boo> usual FUD surrounding this topic whenever its mentioned. What is your boo> take on what he says?
boo> https://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/5i6qa3/can_the_nsafbi_use_intel_me_...
I call FUD on the "keys being traded underground". I highly doubt that even Intel is careless enough to expose the ME signing keys in the clear. Most likely they use a HSM for signing firmwares and the actual keys never leave it. What I *could* buy (but doubt it happened) is that they may have signed some specific firmwares "on special request". In any case, the NSA etc. do not need ME to achieve their goals - there are plenty of other low-hanging fruits starting with good old phishing/social engineering and multitude of OS/application bugs.