Intel Alder Lake source code is now online
Tom’s Hardware reports that Intel could be in trouble after a serious data leak.
It is reported that 12th Gen Core series source code has now been posted online after it was leaked by a 4chan group. The source code is 2.8GB in size after compression, and it appears to contain important information such as BIOS data. The data was already published on Github, however given the size of this leak it may take time to assess what exactly was shared by the perpetrators.
The majority of the data appears to cover BIOS or chipset information for Alder Lake-S CPUs (desktop). Should this leak be proven real, it may uncover some secrets that Intel engineers would probably prefer to keep to themselves. Thus far, there are no reports on any security sensitive data being leaked, for instance Trusted Platform Module source code, which would be a much bigger problem for Intel.
The source code to the Intel Alder Lake has been leaked online.
* Alder Lake CPU was released November 4, 2021
* Source code is 2.8GB (compressed)
* Leak (allegedly) from 4chan
* We have not reviewed the entirety of the code base, it is massive— vx-underground (@vxunderground) October 8, 2022
While the data clearly originated at Intel, the source of the leak may not be the CPU maker itself. It is reported that some data are referring to “Lenovo Feature Tag Test”, which could suggest that OEM partner could be the true source of this leak.
In 2021 and 2022 we have seen some leaks of confidential information that was stolen by hackers. This includes data on AMD new and old future processors or NVIDIA leak that confirmed the codenames of future architecture and configurations of all Ada Lovelace GPUs.
Update: Mark Ermolov, Intel platform security researcher, might have already found some interesting data in regard to SGX (Intel® Software Guard Extensions):
Source: Tom’s Hardware