Is your computer data in grave danger?

[Rockin Robbins]

MINIX — The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

What if you absolutely had no way to protect yourself from snooping and malware except by turning your computer off? Remember the Sony Rootkit debacle, where Sony hid a mole in your operating system that turned off your ability to write to your optical drives forever? Sony suffered billions of dollars in penalties and loss of sales in that one. This is worse.

What operating system are you running? Windows? Mac? Linux? It doesn't matter a bit. Every one of them is under the complete control of a hidden operating system you have no access to if you are running any of all recent Intel chips!

If you have a modern Intel CPU (released in the last few years) with Intel’s Management Engine built in, you’ve got another complete operating system running that you might not have had any clue was in there: MINIX.

That’s right. MINIX. The Unix-like OS originally developed by Andrew Tanenbaum as an educational tool — to demonstrate operating system programming — is built into every new Intel CPU.

MINIX is running on “Ring -3” (that’s “negative 3”) on its own CPU. A CPU that you, the user/owner of the machine, have no access to. The lowest “Ring” you have any real access to is “Ring 0,” which is where the kernel of your OS (the one that you actually chose to use, such as Linux) resides. Most user applications take place in “Ring 3” (without the negative).

The first thing that jumps out at me here: This means MINIX (specifically a version of MINIX 3) is in all likelihood the most popular OS shipping today on modern Intel-based computers (desktops, laptops and servers). That, right there, is absolutely crazy.

The second thing to make my head explode: You have zero access to “Ring -3” / MINIX. But MINIX has total and complete access to the entirety of your computer. All of it. It knows all and sees all, which presents a huge security risk — especially if MINIX, on that super-secret Ring -3 CPU, is running many services and isn’t updated regularly with security patches.

Google is scared chipless. We should pay attention. If we must buy a CPU, we should buy AMD.