Intel is investigating the alleged leak of more than 20 gigabytes of its proprietary data and source code, which a security researcher said was due to a data breach earlier this year.
The data, which was publicly available in BitTorrent feeds at the time of this post, includes data that Intel is providing to partners and customers under the NDA, a company spokeswoman said. In the background, she said Intel employees don't believe the data came from a network breach. She also said that the company is still trying to determine how up-to-date the material is and that there is no evidence to date that the data contains customer or personal information.
"We are investigating this situation," company officials said in a statement. “The information appears to come from the Intel Resource and Design Center, which stores information for use by our customers, partners, and other outside parties who have registered to access. We believe that a person with access has downloaded and shared this data. "
Confidential lake
The data was published by Tillie Kottmann, a Swiss software engineer who offered barebone details on Twitter. Kottmann called the leak "exconfidential Lake", a reference to the Intel insider name for its 10-nanometer chip platform. He said he received the data from a source that breached Intel earlier this year and that today's rate will be followed by others in the future.
"Most things here have never been published before and are classified as confidential under NDA or Intel Restricted Secret," wrote Kottmann. He said some of the content included:
- Intel ME Bringup Instructions + (Flash-) Tools + Examples for different platforms
- Kabylake (Purley Platform) BIOS reference code and sample code + initialization code (some of which are exported git repos with full history)
- Intel CEFDK (Firmware Development Kit for Consumer Electronics (Bootloader Material)) SOURCES
- Silicon / FSP source code packages for different platforms
- Various Intel development and debugging tools
- Simics simulation for Rocket Lake S and possibly other platforms
- Various roadmaps and other documents
- Binary files for camera drivers Intel for SpaceX
- Schematics, documents, tools + firmware for the unpublished Tiger Lake platform
- (very terrible) Kabylake FDK training videos
- Intel Trace Hub + decoder files for different Intel ME versions
- Elkhart Lake Silicon reference and platform sample code
- Some Verilog content for different Xeon platforms, unsure of what it is.
- Debug BIOS / TXE builds for different platforms
- Bootguard SDK (encrypted zip)
- Intel Snowridge / Snowfish process simulator ADK
- Different circuit diagrams
- Intel Marketing Material Templates (InDesign)
- Many other things
Material only in May
A quick check of the leaked material shows that it is made of confidential materials that Intel customers need to design motherboards, BIOS, or other things that work with CPUs and other chips made by Intel. Although we are still analyzing the content, we see design and test documents, source code and presentations that range from the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2018 to a few months ago.
Most of these documents and source code packages apply to Intel CPU platforms like Kaby Lake or the upcoming Tiger Lake, although there are some other documents related to other products, such as: For example, an Intel sensor package developed for SpaceX.
There is also a folder for the Intel Management Engine, but its contents are also something that Intel integrators do not yet know. They are test code and recommendations as to when and how often these automated tests should be run while designing systems that include an Intel CPU with Intel ME.
Newer elements of the dump included "May 5 Whitley / Cedar Island Platform Message of the Week". Cedar Island is the motherboard architecture found under the Cooper Lake and Ice Lake Xeon CPUs. Some of these chips were released earlier this year, while others are not yet widely available. Whitley is the dual socket architecture for Cooper Lake (14 nm) and Ice Lake (10 nm) Xeons. Cedar Island is only for Cooper Lake
The content contains many charts and graphs like the following:
Some content contains a cryptic reference to voltage errors in some Ice Lake samples. It is not clear whether the errors apply to the hardware actually shipped to customers or if they occur on reference boards that Intel OEMs provided to develop their own boards.
This is a breaking story. It will be updated as more details become available.
