Lots of words, very few details. Fonts getting a "bit pixellated"? Are
   you kidding me? Packages "piggybacking on other packages"? This is all
   very imprecise language for someone who is attempting to convince us
   that something very grave is going on. And as usual, not a single hex
   dump of a single packet. Not of any of the packets supposedly spewing
   out of their supposedly disabled Ethernet port, not out of their
   supposedly disabled wifi card, not of one of these supposedly
   piggybacked packages.

   I can imagine why the writing of someone who was up against something
   like this might sound like the ravings of a lunatic. That's why I read
   the whole thing. But as I read, I kept wondering where the "there" was.
   But this feels far more like the sudden significance everything takes
   on when you take a hit of acid or are about to have a temporal lobe
   seizure than a genuine realization.

   I'm not saying these capabilities don't exist; I'm sure they do. I'm
   not even saying the author is lying or stupid. But most of us who are
   attracted to security research are a bit "on the edge" to begin with,
   and it seems like Snowden's revelations and the like have created
   all-powerful bogeymen in some of our minds and pushed us over the edge.
   We have people making claims like the NSA can break any encryption,
   that computers are communicating by sound (yes, BadBIOS is another of
   these), and that they've been "painted" by a network with all sorts of
   vague capabilities.

   I've been reading these stories with an open mind. Maybe some people in
   this field just talk that way. Maybe they're vague because they want to
   keep their research proprietary. But if that were the case, why not say
   so? Why not say what work you have yet to do and give an approximate
   date for a full announcement?

   Even assuming some of these claims are true, not asking for more
   evidence robs us of the ability to defend ourselves. Running off to
   build f2f networks is fun and all, but it's not going to do a lick of
   good if we have no idea what we're up against beyond some vague
   descriptions, especially when you consider that the capabilities of our
   adversaries go well beyond the technological. There is such a thing as
   technological security that's "too good", when you've spent all your
   time defending against technological attacks only to succomb to, as
   others on this thread have pointed out, a rubber hose.

   I love that this group is open minded. I love that anyone can make a
   claim and it will get seriously considered by many without requiring
   special credentials. But I also feel like a lot of people here are very
   easily ratholed by extraordinary claims that lack not just
   extraordinary evidence, but any evidence whatsoever other than someone
   we may or may not know well saying it's so.