It is hard to completely remove ME in modern motherboards, because many functions like fan control was moved into ME. Also you could get resets every few minutes or uninitialized onboard hardware like network controller of sound card if you completely clean ME on board that is not suitable.
A neutralized ME doesn't have an attack surface anymore. The network stack is disabled, so an attacker would need physical access. If that happens, a neutralized ME isn't how he's going to compromise your system.
Not shure about laptops with integrated WiFi, those that have WiFi chip soldered on mainboard instead of traditional miniPCI-E card in socket.
You can replace the built-in wifi chip with an Atheros one to make sure.
We can't be sure about that until ME code will be reverse engineered fully and replaced with something opensource wih same functionality.
A neutralized Intel ME has 300 kB of code running, which is too small for a network stack. You don't know what's going on with a black box, so you're assuming the worst, but some things are very unlikely.
It's not that easy, since Atheros chip will have another pinout and you can't just desolder old one and solder Atheros instead.
Is it the norm now to solder wifi chips onto the motherboard? There are still laptops where you can replace it.
A neutralized Intel ME has 300 kB of code running, which is too small for a network stack.
Chek lwIP, you will be surprised. Full scale TCP/IP stack with only dozens of kb footprint. Pretty good thing, I use it often in small networking projects. More than enough for ME needs.
Is it the norm now to solder wifi chips onto the motherboard?
IDK, but I already saw few where everything is soldered on motherboard, including WiFi chip and SSD. Of course you still could find decent machines where CPU, memory, WWAN, WiFi, SSD are in sockets, but they are mostly expensive top things. Most modern laptops have CPU and at least part of memory soldered. I think soon we will have everything soldered laptops only. Sockets reduce profits, when a customer could just add some memory, replace CPU or SSD or replace WiFi card with a better one.
A neutralized ME doesn't have an attack surface anymore. The network stack is disabled, so an attacker would need physical access. If that happens, a neutralized ME isn't how he's going to compromise your system.
You can replace the built-in wifi chip with an Atheros one to make sure.
Also it's spelt 'sure', not 'shure'.
We can't be sure about that until ME code will be reverse engineered fully and replaced with something opensource wih same functionality.
While you use proprietary blob of any kind, you are potentially vulnerable.
It's not that easy, since Atheros chip will have another pinout and you can't just desolder old one and solder Atheros instead.
Thanks. Looks like I fell under brand name imprinting. :)
A neutralized Intel ME has 300 kB of code running, which is too small for a network stack. You don't know what's going on with a black box, so you're assuming the worst, but some things are very unlikely.
Is it the norm now to solder wifi chips onto the motherboard? There are still laptops where you can replace it.
Chek lwIP, you will be surprised. Full scale TCP/IP stack with only dozens of kb footprint. Pretty good thing, I use it often in small networking projects. More than enough for ME needs.
IDK, but I already saw few where everything is soldered on motherboard, including WiFi chip and SSD. Of course you still could find decent machines where CPU, memory, WWAN, WiFi, SSD are in sockets, but they are mostly expensive top things. Most modern laptops have CPU and at least part of memory soldered. I think soon we will have everything soldered laptops only. Sockets reduce profits, when a customer could just add some memory, replace CPU or SSD or replace WiFi card with a better one.