Bit9

New Centrino platform will be all of the rage at the upcoming Black Hat 2009 conference in Washington DC this February. Joanna Rutkowska and Rafal Wojtczuk will evaluate attacking scenarios against Intel's Trusted Execution Technology.

Intel's efforts to bring a fully features Web Server directly into the Motherboard has been discussed on numerous boards and has been highlighted by Ivan Krstic in his keynote at the First Conference in Vancouver earlier this year. Subverting permanently one's motherboard may end up being the ultimate acts of subversion.

So what's all the rage. You can read on Intel's pages:

"3. Intel AMT Platform Security

While one of the key usage models for Intel AMT is that it allows management applications to access client computers when they are in a powered-off state, the radio in a wireless network interface card (NIC) is typically not operational in power states other than S0. Thus, no wireless Intel AMT functionality is available when laptops are powered down or in low-power modes (sleep, hibernate, etc.).

Going one better: "Intel AMT Releases 2.5 and 3.0 are concurrent releases, with Release 2.5 supporting wireless capabilities on mobile platforms and Release 3.0 supporting wired PCs."

You may not need a physical access anymore, but rather wardrive through a neighborhood or just take a public transportation to attack all those laptops that do not even need to be powered on.

Accompanying the Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro release were announcements of new notebook computers from Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, Fujitsu, Sony, Toshiba, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, and others. Several hundred new notebook models with the updated Centrino platforms are expected to be released and make this technology ubiqitous.