Intel Management Mode – Apple didn’t lock

Thomas Claburn for The Register: Apple forgot to lock Intel Management Engine in laptops, so get patching

“In a blog post on Tuesday, researchers Maxim Goryachy and Mark Ermolov, involved in the discovery of an Intel ME firmware flaw last year, reveal that Chipzilla’s ME contains an undocumented Manufacturing Mode, among its other little known features like High Assurance Platform mode.”

Not quite a major panic: the macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 update apparently fixed this, and an attack would require local access. Still…

Based on this rather good article at Positive Technologies: Intel ME Manufacturing Mode: obscured dangers and their relationship to Apple MacBook vulnerability CVE-2018-4251

David Harley