Draconic NEO

You’d probably need to monitor the computer’s network for a long time to get a detection, also something important is that if you’re on a System with AMT disabled/not present, you won’t ever get any, since those IntelME versions come without any network stack whatsoever.

In fact that’s one of the primary reasons why I haven’t tried it yet, almost none of the Intel computers I own even have the Intel AMT component enabled in the IntelME firmware, meaning they just won’t do it, like ever. The only one I have which supports AMT is an old Laptop with a slow AF intel Centrino, it’s so slow that it struggles with XFCE alone and no other apps running, I don’t know if I could use this computer long enough to get any readings from it because it’s just too slow to do anything really.

If you want to try it out I’d suggest building a copy of IntelMEtool and testing your Intel Machines to see if they have AMT enabled or present before trying yourself.

The same way you would do it with a black box while optionally taking as many shortcuts as one is comfortable with by virtue of assuming having a better understanding of it’s been built?

You can audit IntelME a similar way, it’s just more annoying and tedious, it’s also been done before by people. Honestly I don’t bother much with the IntelME conspiracy theory much anymore (and yes I will call it a conspiracy theory, more on why later), I did used to be extremely interested in it about 2 years ago, I researched the topic heavily. I met people and colleagues who were also interested in it. However I found when I suggested ways to study or prove the claims made about it, like where it’s communicating to or how it interacts with the system or even just disassembling the rom I would get weird answers about it knowing when it’s being probed and that I wouldn’t consider entirely rational when describing a tiny embedded system like this. Then I came across the 34C3 video and basically I realized then and there that this is a conspiracy theory, as there is a whole great study done by these guys and everyone is ignoring it.

Then there’s the fact that many of the theories out there seem to resist investigation, and people seem to come up with more elaborate ways of it resisting. Example: I presented the idea of sniffing the Ethernet connection of the computer by cutting the cable in half and probing it with a debugger and they claimed that the chip would listen with the microphone and abort, or that IntelME would skew the data collected when loaded up on another computer.

The end result is that I bought a high end PC from System76 with the capability to disable IntelME largely for nothing, which would be fine if the Laptop wasn’t so problematic, like the fact that it gets insanely hot and chews through battery insanely fast (seriously Battery consumption is worse on this laptop than my Steam Deck). Also it chews through power like this even on the iGPU, but it was way worse on the nvidia GPU, like way way worse. I wish I had gotten something AMD based, They’re killing it when it comes to performance and efficiency, more than I can say for Toasty old Intel.

I think that a lot of the IntelME stuff is what people would typically call a conspiracy theory, not like a theory of a conspiracy, but rather where the conspiracy is largely invented for the purpose of being scared or angry, or for attention from others who get scared or angry. Obviously not all of it is, and there are people who do research it, but the videos about it that you usually see on YouTube, most of them are like this.

The thing is that intelME isn’t like a government conspiracy where there isn’t much if any tangible evidence for it, IntelME is physically installed on millions upon millions of Intel PCs around the world, so it’s very easy to test the myths and claims by sacrificing some of these Intel computers. The fact though that most of the people making claims seem to not want to do that, suggests that they don’t think it’s as big a problem as they say it is. There are few people who have tested it though, a notable example from 34C3 where they found that it’s actually much more boring. Honestly the idea that people say it cracks Wifi passwords, or exchanges data home with a server, all this stuff people claim can be easily tested, even analyzing the network packets from a PC to see if it actually phones home when it’s off (can do that by probing an Ethernet cable and capturing the signals externally. The reason I claim the IntelME stiff is a conspiracy is because most of the people making the claims resist investigation, the same way that Flat earth theories and Lizard people theories resist investigation. My example of probing the network cable? Yeah I proposed that to someone already and they claimed IntelME would know the Ethernet is being probed, when I inquired how I was given many nonsensical claims, from microphone listening to talking to IntelME on another computer skewing the results, can’t make this shit up.

So to summarize, a lot of the claims are unsubstantiated claims, which could be easily proven or disproven due to easy access to IntelME based systems, but isn’t because the people making the claims can’t be bothered, and to top it all off many of them simply make arguments to resist investigation of IntelME in the first place, just like classical bad-faith conspiracy theories, and actual investigations like the one shown as 34C3 are swept under the rug. I don’t think IntelME doesn’t have issues or that it isn’t a security risk, it is like any firmware, but the sensationalized claims made about it regularly online don’t hold water, and the people making them should be called out for perpetrating conspiracy theories without merit. I’d leave some links to them but I don’t know if that’s allowed here, could be considered harassment.