Asus Vivobook 14 E406SA 1.0 - Intel ME

Hi,

I recently acquired an Asus Vivobook E406SA 1.0, which I have been 
investigating to see if there is a possibility to port to coreboot. 
While doing this, I seem to have found some weird information about 
Intel ME on this laptop. Although the CPU was produced in 2016 and it 
can be assumed that it includes Intel ME, all the tests I've done come 
up with the conclusion that it doesn't. I've included some detailed logs 
in an attachment 'me.txt'. Going forward, what can I do to verify if 
this laptop does have Intel ME or not? Flashrom doesn't support laptops 
well and I don't have the ability to risk bricking this laptop 
currently, is there another option to read the flash chip in this?

- permanentjpeg

On 2018-05-23 19:32, [e-mail] wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I recently acquired an Asus Vivobook E406SA 1.0, which I have been
> investigating to see if there is a possibility to port to coreboot.
> While doing this, I seem to have found some weird information about
> Intel ME on this laptop. Although the CPU was produced in 2016 and it
> can be assumed that it includes Intel ME, all the tests I've done come
> up with the conclusion that it doesn't. I've included some detailed
> logs in an attachment 'me.txt'. Going forward, what can I do to verify
> if this laptop does have Intel ME or not? Flashrom doesn't support
> laptops well and I don't have the ability to risk bricking this laptop
> currently, is there another option to read the flash chip in this?
> permanentjpeg

I forgot the attachment. Whoops.

[Nico Huber]

Hi permanentjpeg,

On 23.05.2018 21:39, [e-mail] wrote:
> On 2018-05-23 19:32, [e-mail] wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I recently acquired an Asus Vivobook E406SA 1.0, which I have been
> > investigating to see if there is a possibility to port to coreboot.
> > While doing this, I seem to have found some weird information about
> > Intel ME on this laptop. Although the CPU was produced in 2016 and it
> > can be assumed that it includes Intel ME, all the tests I've done come
> > up with the conclusion that it doesn't. I've included some detailed
> > logs in an attachment 'me.txt'. Going forward, what can I do to verify
> > if this laptop does have Intel ME or not? Flashrom doesn't support
> > laptops well and I don't have the ability to risk bricking this laptop
> > currently, is there another option to read the flash chip in this?
> > permanentjpeg
>
> I forgot the attachment. Whoops.

it has an Atom based SoC. These do not have a Management Engine but a
Trusted Execution Engine (TXE, or later Converged Security Engine, CSE,
not sure about that name). The latter doesn't provide management fea-
tures like AMT but is about the same as the ME otherwise (another con-
troller in the chip(set) running a huge amount of, from my point of
view, untrusted code). I don't know, but expect, that it also (like the
ME) is more privileged than the actual x86 cores.

Nico

[Rafael Machado]

Maybe you should try to read this flash using some hw equipment, like
Buspirate,
just to be sure you have the entire binary in hands

Em qua, 23 de mai de 2018 às 16:55, Nico Huber  escreveu:
> Hi permanentjpeg,
>
> On 23.05.2018 21:39, [e-mail] wrote:
> > On 2018-05-23 19:32, [e-mail] wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I recently acquired an Asus Vivobook E406SA 1.0, which I have been
> > > investigating to see if there is a possibility to port to coreboot.
> > > While doing this, I seem to have found some weird information about
> > > Intel ME on this laptop. Although the CPU was produced in 2016 and it
> > > can be assumed that it includes Intel ME, all the tests I've done come
> > > up with the conclusion that it doesn't. I've included some detailed
> > > logs in an attachment 'me.txt'. Going forward, what can I do to verify
> > > if this laptop does have Intel ME or not? Flashrom doesn't support
> > > laptops well and I don't have the ability to risk bricking this laptop
> > > currently, is there another option to read the flash chip in this?
> > > permanentjpeg
> >
> > I forgot the attachment. Whoops.
>
> it has an Atom based SoC. These do not have a Management Engine but a
> Trusted Execution Engine (TXE, or later Converged Security Engine, CSE,
> not sure about that name). The latter doesn't provide management fea-
> tures like AMT but is about the same as the ME otherwise (another con-
> troller in the chip(set) running a huge amount of, from my point of
> view, untrusted code). I don't know, but expect, that it also (like the
> ME) is more privileged than the actual x86 cores.
>
> Nico