[Angelino97]

I heard that Intel CPUs have backdoors that allow intel agencies to spy on you, regardless of what software you use. And that AMD CPUs might be more secure.

Does anyone know if any of this is true?

[Skywise]

If the CIA got back doors onto the Intel chips then it got them on the AMD ones too.

I don’t think there’s intentional back doors on either though - just known exploits that the CIA can use.

Windows OTOH…

[bak3r]

I have heard this over the years. It seems highly unlikely that this is the case. It is more likely that there have been exploits vs true back doors. We have seen this quite a bit over the last few years with possible vulnerabilities in intel’s microcode. I doubt it because it would be a hack worth trillions of dollars, keeping that secret would be nearly impossible. Secondly traffic should still be detectable with a decent firewall or pcap on network cards. To be undetectable to 3rd party hardware, it would require a cellular modem integrated into the cpu itself, which could then be easily disabled with shielding. At the end of the day getting a BS FISA warrant and planting something illegal is just easier.

[Zathras]

Defiantly NOT true.
This is rumor is probably related to Intel’s attempt to create a very secure system back in the 90’s based on the internal thermal sensor.
The NSA used its influence to fabricate a story so the project was abandoned and we ended up with AES which given enough time, the NSA can break.

I worked for the Intel processor design team for 20 years.