Intel Skylake and above CPUs can be owned by USB

[DrPop]

Oh man, F$ is just gonna love this report! :(

https://thenextweb.com/security/2017/11/09/researchers-find-almost-every-computer-intel-skylake-cpu-can-owned-via-usb/?amp=1

[zombie67]

Yeah, that IME is an evil thing. This is the 3rd or 4th time people have cracked it.

Does AMD have the equivalent of IME in their CPU/mobo design?

[DrPop]

Does AMD have the equivalent of IME in their CPU/mobo design?

From what I can read, yes. "Platform Security Processor. This chip is found on most AMD platforms from 2013 on, and behaves much like Intel's Management Engine does: it offers simple low-level access to the computer."
Even ARM has something called "Trust Zone technology" in its chips, such as the one on the Raspberry Pi.

So...it doesn't seem like there's much hope of avoiding something like this. One good thing about AMD's offering is that they have employed a 3rd party team to "hack" theirs, and so far, 4 years into it, apparently they haven't managed to crack it, though AMD admits the processor has been "hit hard" in the tests, whatever that means. I think bottom line is that if someone wants to get in bad enough, they will. Business as normal in life - locks only keep honest people honest. We all know that. :P