[coreboot] More experiments with disabling the ME

[Trammell Hudson]

On Fri, Nov 04, 2016 at 09:20:24PM +0000, Nicola Corna wrote:
> [...]
>  * Sandy Bridge accepts an Intel ME firmware with just the FTPR partition, both
>     with and without a valid FPT (the partition table of the Intel ME image).
>     The system doesn't power off after 30 minutes, and the ME reports a
>     successful initialization (see attached cbmem).

I'm really glad to hear that you've been able to replicate my results
and have similar results on slightly different hardware.  Since my original
post I've also replicated the results on a Skylake mobile CPU, which has
a very different ME architecture, although with a similar set of partitions.

>  * Sandy Bridge boots successfully without a good FPT (but with a valid FTPR),
>     so it probably has a "backup" on-chip FPT. The system boots fine and doesn't
>     power itself off after 30 minutes, even if the cbmem entry "ME: FW
>     Partition Table" has the value "BAD" (that, we suppose, means: "I found a
>     broken partition table, I'm using the fallback one").

My guess is that it either has a fallback, a hard coded address or scans
looking for the $FTPR string.

>  * According to Trammell Hudson's tests, this behaviour is the same in Ivy
>     Bridge (the thread's subject says "Sandy Bridge" but his cbmem confirms that
>     his device is actually an Ivy Bridge)

Right.  I was confused since the coreboot architecture directory for the
x230 is named sandybridge.

> [...]
>  * We couldn't remove in any way the FTPR partition on Sandy Bridge: [...]
>  * Relocating the FTPR image doesn't work, even if the FPT entry points to the
>     new location.

Likewise. I also tried relocating it, but was not able to do so.

>  * Shrinking the "reduced" ME partition in IFD to the minimum size allowed (FTPR
>     offset + FTPR size + 4 kB alignment) bricks the device too (but we're not
>     sure about this, maybe we made a mistake during the image creation).

I was able to reduce it to cover 0x3000 to 1 MB.  There appears to be some
data being written into part of the SPI flash by the ME on each boot,
logging someting about the startup?, so the IFD must include that portion.
I did change the IFD to allow the CPU to read the ME region so that I can
include it in my TPM measurements.

>  * We haven't understood yet how to remove the unneeded modules from the FTPR
>     partition, any help is appreciated.

Any of the LZMA compressed files in the FTPR partitoin can be replaced
with 0xFF.  The Huffman ones seem to share a common table, so I wasn't
able to replace any of them individually.

Again, I'm really glad to see that this has started additional research
into this area.

-- 
Trammell