On Mon, 9 Mar 2020 19:07:19 -0700 Razer <g2s@riseup.net> wrote:
The one malicious use I've seen mentioned is the possibility of a virtually undetectable keylogger running at bios level during the machine's operation.
well, that's the "out of the box" configuration of the IME(intel 'management' engine) and the keylogger is the gchq-nsa keylogger, and it's not at bios level, but even lower. And not just a keylogger but it has access to all of system memory etc. so one malicious application would be for 'bad' people other than gchq-nsa to have control of the ME. But funnily enough, that means that the guy who paid for the computer could also replace the gchq-nsa firm-malware with some FOSS code and have a processor that he actually 'owns'. but, that sounds too good to be true, so we'll see....