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A Proposal For A Stateless Laptop

Modern Intel x86-based endpoint systems, such as laptops, are plagued by a number of security-related problems. Additionally, with the recent introduction of Intel Management Engine (ME) microcontroller into all new Intel processors, the trustworthiness of the Intel platform has been seriously questioned. In a recently published paper [ 10 ] the author has presented an in-depth survey of these topics. In this paper the author proposes what she believes might be a reasonable, practical and relatively simple solution to most of the problems. The main principle introduced below is the requirement for the laptop hardware to be stateless , i.e. lacking any persistent storage. This includes it having no firmware-carrying flash memory chips. All the state is to be kept on an external, trusted device. This trusted device is envisioned to be of a small USB stick or SD card form factor. This clean separation of state-carrying vs. stateless silicon is, however, only one of the requirements, itself not enough to address many of the problems discussed in the article referenced above. There are a number of additional requirements: for the endpoint (laptop) hardware, for the trusted “stick”, and

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