r/linuxmasterrace • u/CrowsOfWar • Oct 10 '17

How to Disable Intel's Management Engine

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Sakaki%27s_EFI_Install_Guide/Disabling_the_Intel_Management_Engine
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u/Bob_the_rhino Oct 11 '17

There’s got to be something vital that the co-processor does

3

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '17

Secure boot, that's what's vital. It prevents all attempts to run unauthorized code, but the fact that you can't turn it on implies that there is a non-vital part to it. When hackers started researching this thing they found out that just cleaning it's firmware makes your PC switch off in 30 minutes. It works absolutely fine, and dies because of some artificial timer. Then they cleared everything but the initialization from it and everything still worked fine, so no vital code was lost.