microcode store (was Re: Looking to get into a Mini Computer...)

Except for the encryption, I'm not convinced. People have reverse-engineered harder things. Depends on how you define "compromise". From their point of view, I doubt there is any compromise involved; I would expect that Intel rolls over for the letter agencies, providing documentation and encryption help as desired, so there is no compromise in the sense of doing it without Intel's cooperation. But from the end user's point of view, being attacked by NSA (or whoever) malware reflashing the BIOS to include (say) a subtly broken RNG, that is a compromise, and a rather serious one. I've long been irritated that motherboards don't include hardware en/disables for reflashing, so that to reflash the BIOS you have to do something physical like move a jumper. This is actually a moderately plausible reason for that - it improves security too much. Oh, I don't see it as being a mass compromise. I see it as being targeted: the letter agencies want to see what person (or corporation) XYZ is doing, so they release stealth malware which, when it determines it's reached (one of) the right machine(s), reflashes the BIOS with the tweaked microcode. It's one reason I like old hardware: it's significantly less vulnerable all around to such attacks. (It's also another reason to prefer RISC CPUs: they tend to be less microcoded.) /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B