Pale Moon forum

I hope this is placed in the proper board. Also, if the answer to my question is already posted somewhere here on the forum, or on the main site, sorry!

I noticed today in the unstable build, in about:addons, that there are two Intel Identity Protection Technology plug-ins. Do they come bundled with the unstable build? This is on my wife's computer which also has Firefox, and they are not listed there.

helloimustbegoing wrote:I hope this is placed in the proper board. Also, if the answer to my question is already posted somewhere here on the forum, or on the main site, sorry!

I noticed today in the unstable build, in about:addons, that there are two Intel Identity Protection Technology plug-ins. Do they come bundled with the unstable build?

I don't use the unstable builds, but I doubt it.

Someone else brought this up recently who saw these listed in PM 27.03: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14546
They were thought to come "bundled with" the new PC.
(Don't know why they're not listed in FF.)

I'm using the unstable build (portable version) on an not-new Win 7 and don't have these plugins.

Thanks for the link coffeebreak (btw, that's a cool user name). I'll have to do more research on them. It's interesting that they don't show up in Firefox. I'm interested to know why.

helloimustbegoing wrote:It's interesting that they don't show up in Firefox. I'm interested to know why.

Firefox x64 & Pale Moon x86?

JustOff wrote:
Firefox x64 & Pale Moon x86?

Yes. Now why didn't I think of this?

Does anyone know if these plugins pose a security/privacy risk?

Found a couple of things.

1. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1076445

If this guy knows what he's talking about, he suggests to set them to "Never Activate" because they will bypass the browser's built in privacy features.

2. http://www.shouldiremoveit.com/Intel-Identity-Protection-Technology-13783-program.aspx

This website gives a couple of ways to delete these plugins. Not sure what I should do.

helloimustbegoing wrote:Does anyone know if these plugins pose a security/privacy risk?

I always set such crap to "never activate", I think it's enough to be safe.

Setting plugins to "never activate" means the libraries are not loaded (NPAPI plugins are loaded on-the-fly), so it will be completely equivalent to not having them on your system at all.

I also have both of them. They're part of vendor crapware shipped with the PC. In theory they're a good idea, to improve encryption with hardware means, but in reality nobody actually uses them. So they're disabled.

joe04 wrote:I also have both of them. They're part of vendor crapware shipped with the PC. In theory they're a good idea, to improve encryption with hardware means, but in reality nobody actually uses them. So they're disabled.

I don't know about that. Intel just simply can't be trusted these days.

FYI, Brian Bernard of Intel did contact me about a browser hardening proposal (inside the browser itself, called SGX) last November/December. I evaluated their setup and found it more useful for commercial software that want to protect their copyright, patented software modules or business secrets in their software (where binary reverse-engineering and/or modification is a major concern) rather than it being useful for us. After some discussion I gracefully declined implementing it, even if they offered the necessary hardware (specific generations of Intel processors) to support this code as part of the development strategy.

You may or may not trust Intel, but they are putting forward some interesting software/hardware hybrid technologies, and these kinds of technologies are primarily aimed at businesses, who can't afford (literally) to be screwed over in the trust department by these things (and if it came to light, Intel would be breaking their own windows, so it is really in their own interest to be on the level.)

half-moon wrote: I don't know about that. Intel just simply can't be trusted these days.

Agreed

You may or may not trust Intel, but they are putting forward some interesting software/hardware hybrid technologies

The whole point is who are interested, it is right that most likely business, but criminals and surveillance too. So i say that individual users better not use such things.

helloimustbegoing wrote:I hope this is placed in the proper board. Also, if the answer to my question is already posted somewhere here on the forum, or on the main site, sorry!

I noticed today in the unstable build, in about:addons, that there are two Intel Identity Protection Technology plug-ins. Do they come bundled with the unstable build? This is on my wife's computer which also has Firefox, and they are not listed there.

It's something really really bad that you should disable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Act ... Technology

redblade, please make sure you understand which technology is talked about. IPT != AMT

The gist of it appears this to be a leftover from Win 7/8
the browsers pick it up and install it - not updated since 2014

Probably obsolete, disabling it seems to make zero difference, especially if you use a decent a/v program


Note: Firefox has already removed it, only Palemoon seems to have kept it.

ArchieLukas wrote:Note: Firefox has already removed it, only Palemoon seems to have kept it.

If it's a plugin, then that is because Firefox no longer supports plugins (except their special exception for Adobe Flash, because... why not make a special exception for your buddy and leaving everyone else out in the cold, eh?)

ArchieLukas wrote:Note: Firefox has already removed it, only Pale Moon seems to have kept it.

For those who are new to this discussion, may I direct you to the roadmap to Firefox's decimation...
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14846