cadmium VS me_cleaner

No, not planned. Also, there is Cadmium already

Also check out Cadmium, I stole som code for that and managed to boot Slackware 14.2 on my mine.

Figure out what chipset (more specific than "Arm") it has, and then see what you can do with https://github.com/hexdump0815/imagebuilder or https://github.com/Maccraft123/Cadmium

I have built a few kernels a long while ago and fiddled with building Cadmium Linux and managed to create an arch port. Granted this was on the back of other work https://github.com/Maccraft123/Cadmium/pull/53 .

ARM USERS LOOK HERE: Cadmium (specialized Linux distro for ARM Chromebooks only) https://github.com/Maccraft123/Cadmium

No, I actually uploaded the firmware images here:

https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/issues/233

Some times Intel version of Lenovo have a problem with Intel ME , check this out. LINK

Yes; there are several ways, depending heavily on the version, and ranging from most trustworthy to least trustworthy:

* By patching the ME firmware itself - see the me_cleaner project, and methods documented here: https://puri.sm/posts/deep-dive-into-intel-me-disablement/ . This is Pretty Reliable; the runtime code has been deleted from flash.

* By setting a bit in the flash configuration, assumed to be added for the US High Assurance program: https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/wiki/HAP-AltMeDisable-bi... , https://www.ptsecurity.com/ww-en/analytics/disabling-intel-m... . This is Mostly Reliable; the mechanism has been fairly aggressively reverse engineered and was added for a program with strict requirements.

* By sending an HECI command that says "hey ME, turn off your runtime" https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/52800 . This is Somewhat Reliable; the method is well understood and seems to work but I'm not sure someone has done a deep dive audit into whether it could be re-enabled somehow.

"...this is interesting is because POWER9 is basically the first time the public got a real view of how sophisticated the backstage cast actually is of a modern server CPU."

Not quite correct; the OpenSPARC T1 and T2 were publicly released and available by 2008.

https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc.html

"Large parts of this process are handled by vendor-supplied mystery firmware blobs, which may as well be boxes with “???” written in them.

The maintainers of the me_cleaner script likely have the clearest view of what is known.

https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner

Your dedicated laptop with disabled Intel ME running OpenBSD might be the gold standard choice for your hardware wallet. Main discussion here.

I consider a dedicated laptop with deactivated Intel ME running OpenBSD (maybe from USB flash) can be a much secure alternative to a proprietary hardware wallet connected to your casual multi-purpose laptop.

On a side note, if Intel has made it this hard to disable Intel ME, is the US government happy with this change? It was them who got the HAP bit part working, and I do not see any news suggesting they have another trick to disable Intel ME. Should I just assume that this still works? Has anybody here tried? And does me_cleaner still work (last updated in 2018: https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner)?