Intel's Secret Costa Rica Facility is a Monument to Security Research

An undisclosed location in Costa Rica houses one of Intel's many research facilities - although this one is slightly different from the norm. Rather than focussing on leading-edge development, the Costa Rica facility handles the long tail of deprecated hardware that Intel has accumulated over the years. The warehouse currently houses around 3,000 different hardware and software pieces that Intel has produced in the last ten years, and it serves a very specific purpose: security research.

While for an average consumer, a product's lifecycle typically ends with it being replaced with the latest and greatest (whatever that means for a particular user), Intel has to think of all the consumers that don't keep up with the blisteringly fast pace of the semiconductor industry. As product support drops off, however, older hardware becomes more and more vulnerable to advances in cybersecurity research - and new exploits of previously unknown vulnerabilities.

Images of the Costa Rica facilities as provided by Intel

(Image credit: Intel)

As Intel's product portfolio grows, the facility will require continued expansion - either locally or with additional branching in other locations. For example, Intel is already executing plans to expand the Costa Rica location as early as next year, nearly doubling the space to 27,000 square feet from its current 14,000. This will scale the amount of deprecated hardware and software solutions it houses up to 6,000 units.

The facility is designed to allow remote diagnostics and security research: it works 24/7, 365 days of the year, and is staffed by 25 engineers focused solely on this effort. Marcel Cortes Beer, a manager at the lab, said to the Wall Street Journal that the facility receives about 1,000 build requests a month for remote security tests, and 50 new devices come in weekly. In addition, Intel engineers in other locations can remotely request that a specific hardware configuration be put together and made available for remote testing via a cloud-based connection.

"I can make an exact replica of the submitting researcher's system. Same CPU, same operating system version, microcode, BIOS," Said Anders Fogh, an Intel senior principal engineer based in Germany. "All of which increase the chance of reproducing the issue, which is often the best starting point." He added that the facility's "huge library of machines is really the go-to place for doing this kind of work."

Images of the Costa Rica facilities as provided by Intel

An Intel engineer assembles a system for testing. (Image credit: Intel)

The Costa Rica lab is intriguing in the wake of the Spectre/Meltdown crisis and has a deep impact on the company's product development. Intel now has a refined process for its security research; since the facility became operational, all newly released products are accompanied by technical documentation meant to allow engineers to support them for up to 10 years. According to Mr. Falzian, it's also one of the first Intel facilities to receive new hardware releases for storage and research.

The undisclosed physical location of the facilities in Costa Rica speaks to how seriously Intel is taking testing of deprecated hardware. Anyone that's granted access to the facility is strictly controlled; requests must be approved by senior managers, and surveillance cameras watch the equipment (and the technicians) at all times. One can only wonder what damage a malicious party could do with access to what secrets the facility holds.

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Francisco Pires
Freelance News Writer

Francisco Pires is a freelance news writer for Tom's Hardware with a soft side for quantum computing.