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Anyone know more about this?

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-intel-chip-coup-hollywood.html

This connected with another article I read about remove switches seams rather worrisome!

A couple things came to mind when reading that article. First, this seems to make very little sense considering you cannot stop digital piracy. I don't see how this would work but even if it does, the cpu (or the gpu) is not the weak spot the pirates are exploiting. Second I'm very disappointed in physorg, that article read like an advertisement.

Edit: I also would really like more info though.

I figure it is only a matter of time until some Ukranian malware author figures out how to hack into the kill switch mechanism, and releases a virus that commands all of the Sandy Bridge CPUs to commit mass suicide.

Edit: Getting off on a slight tangent, one of the systems the place I work for sells has a kill switch that commands the unit to brick itself (by completely wiping the internal flash memory containing all of the code and data). This feature has proven to be somewhat irksome. Several accidental "brickings" (both during testing at our own manufacturing facility, and in the field due to wiring errors during installation) have occurred. Hopefully Intel's kill switch is less hair-trigger than this!

More fear mongering I guess. Until there are more detailed studies showing otherwise, my understanding is that the content MAFIAA feature requires that you use that Intel Insider (or Cinema Now that I am reading?) software to buy movies online. So if you get your media from other sources it should not matter.

The kill switch from what I can tell so far is indeed more of a security feature in business settings. So if you don't enable the vPro/TXT features from the BIOS or simply get the SKUs that don't have them, you should be ok. Of course, the possibility of a malware enabling such feature (if present) is there, but we will have to see. At this point there is simply not enough information.

In all fairness though, these things seem like those "Blue Crystals" features ala the PIII PID. The rules were changed back in the nascent internet days and it is only getting bigger now with all the social media. If there are enough consumer backlash this may force Intel to retract.

just brew it! wrote:

Getting off on a slight tangent, one of the systems the place I work for sells has a kill switch that commands the unit to brick itself (by completely wiping the internal flash memory containing all of the code and data). This feature has proven to be somewhat irksome. Several accidental "brickings" (both during testing at our own manufacturing facility, and in the field due to wiring errors during installation) have occurred. Hopefully Intel's kill switch is less hair-trigger than this!

This happened at the last place I worked with our alarm system....some moron in their tech department accidentally sent a command to brick our alarm system. 2 months later when my store was broken into, no one could seem to find out why the alarm didn't go off and the monitoring company didn't call the police or me. We ended up loosing $10k worth of mechandise, prob would have lost more but I am sure the burglar was worried the police were on the way. The week after the break in, the alarm system sent a tech out to look at the system, and he said it was completely bricked...said it might as well been whistlin dixie for all the good it could do. Took him about 4 hours to get it reloaded with our alarm info again.

From today's Shortbread:

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/20 ... -intel.ars

It seems only an enabler for some service/software you have installed/subscribed to store their HDCP keys. So just do not install/enroll?

Starfalcon wrote:

This happened at the last place I worked with our alarm system....some moron in their tech department accidentally sent a command to brick our alarm system. 2 months later when my store was broken into, no one could seem to find out why the alarm didn't go off and the monitoring company didn't call the police or me. We ended up loosing $10k worth of mechandise, prob would have lost more but I am sure the burglar was worried the police were on the way. The week after the break in, the alarm system sent a tech out to look at the system, and he said it was completely bricked...said it might as well been whistlin dixie for all the good it could do. Took him about 4 hours to get it reloaded with our alarm info again.

The fact that it was not obvious the unit was bricked (to the user and/or the alarm company) for 2 months is a pretty serious design flaw. IMO it ought to have some sort of status display, and "phone home" periodically to verify that everything is still in working order.

Eh, not really an issue. Just some decryption hardware on the CPU. The same decryption will run, in software, on other CPUs. So Sandy Bridge's "DRM" is just going to save you a few CPU cycles, which you would never notice anyway.