Since there did not seem to be a "place" for this I apologize if I selected the wrong place to put this.
This should concern anyone who hooks up to a network or the internet: The article was "How Hardware-Based Security Protects PCs" but reading all the way into the article you find a scary little idea that is currently limited to China (at least according to the article) and it is this:
Quote :
In China, Star SoftCom has an AMT-based service called StarNet that manages business PCs. The company has demonstrated a version of StarNet for home PCs that has policies to manage the firewall and anti-virus software, along with security services like NetNanny; if a user disables the NetNanny service, the AMT policy disconnects the PC from the Internet to prevent browsing, but the PC can still be managed remotely through AMT. If the home PC crashes or can't boot because of a virus or rootkit, StarNet can connect remotely, run a diagnostic operating system, mount the hard drive and look for corrupted drivers, viruses, a corrupted boot sector and other problems, fix the system, and send a signal that reboots the machine.
They can literally control your home PC from the internet and browse your files, allow you to surf or not, shut down or start up your machine (even if it is turned off) install software, etc. This is MS "Palladium" with a vengeance and on Steroids. Very scary stuff here folks. What all do you think about this? Imagine this in the hands of a man who thinks he doesn't need to follow laws to listen to all phone calls here in the United States... and the companies who let him do it.
Our computers, our thoughts, our ability to surf the web is in severe danger from these kinds of technologies but they keep being presented to us as the only "safe" way to operate computers.
