Intel immediately grew to become the obvious sufferer of a large inner knowledge breach, as roughly 20 GB of varied Intel paperwork and instruments have begun displaying up in an information cache uploaded to the broader web. With supplies seemingly spanning over a decade, the breach reportedly contains all the pieces from Intel presentation templates to BIOS code and debugging instruments, and would signify one of many greatest mental property leaks from a chipmaker in years.
Released by Till Kottmann, a Swiss software program engineer and open safety advocate, Kottmann has acknowledged that that is the primary of a number of deliberate Intel IP releases, calling this primary launch the “Intel exconfidential Lake Platform Release”. According to tweets posted by Kottmann, he obtained the fabric from an nameless supply who breached Intel earlier this 12 months. Meanwhile, ZDNet reviews that Kottmann is a daily determine in IP leaks, and has printed a variety of different tech firm leaks earlier than.
Responding to this leak, Intel this afternoon has issued a quick assertion to the press acknowledging the leak, and stating that they imagine it got here type the Intel Resource and Design Center, a safe Intel repository for third get together companions to entry varied confidential paperwork and schematics.
We are investigating this example. The info seems to return from the Intel Resource and Design Center, which hosts info to be used by our clients, companions and different exterior events who’ve registered for entry. We imagine a person with entry downloaded and shared this knowledge.
While AnandTech has not validated the contents of the info cache, I’ve heard from one supply who has seen it that there are signed NDA paperwork in there mentioning an Intel associate. So whereas Intel could also be proper concerning the supply of the info, the precise breach could have occurred with a associate somewhat than the precise Intel repository, or in live performance with a breach of Intel’s repository.
Overall, Kottmann claims that the leak has a large assortment of varied Intel confidential and NDA’d paperwork and instruments, together with:
- Intel ME Bringup guides + (flash) tooling + samples for varied platforms
- Kabylake (Purley Platform) BIOS Reference Code and Sample Code + Initialization code (a few of it as exported git repos with full historical past)
- Intel CEFDK (Consumer Electronics Firmware Development Kit (Bootloader stuff)) SOURCES
- Silicon / FSP supply code packages for varied platforms
- Various Intel Development and Debugging Tools
- Simics Simulation for Rocket Lake S and doubtlessly different platforms
- Various roadmaps and different paperwork
- Binaries for Camera drivers Intel made for SpaceX
- Schematics, Docs, Tools + Firmware for the unreleased Tiger Lake platform
- (very horrible) Kabylake FDK coaching movies
- Intel Trace Hub + decoder recordsdata for varied Intel ME variations
- Elkhart Lake Silicon Reference and Platform Sample Code
- Some Verilog stuff for varied Xeon Platforms, not sure what it’s precisely.
- Debug BIOS/TXE builds for varied Platforms
- Bootguard SDK (encrypted zip)
- Intel Snowridge / Snowfish Process Simulator ADK
- Various schematics
- Intel Marketing Material Templates (InDesign)
Thus far, whereas nobody has reported discovering something fairly as delicate as Intel CPU or GPU design schematics – which is in step with the declare that it originated from Intel’s Resource and Design Center. None the much less, the fabric within the leak seems to be to be fairly worthwhile, and doubtlessly damaging in the long term. Firmware blobs are significantly fascinating, as whereas these would must be reverse engineered to extract helpful info out of them, they might doubtlessly comprise vital info that hasn’t in any other case been shared earlier than.
Otherwise, in a little bit of situational irony,…
