>they might have CUPS running because they have a printer configured Runs as root. >SSH so that people can connect to help them Runs as root. >perhaps they'

>they might have CUPS running because they have a printer configured Runs as root. >SSH so that people can connect to help them Runs as root. >perhaps they're doing some web development and have Apache running I think you're fundamentally screwed if your adversary is willing to use apache 0days on you. >There are any number of daemons that could be running on a laptop with legitimate access to the rest of the network In practice this is a very rare scenario, the severity of this fuckup by Huawei should be viewed in that light. It's not ideal, but this is hardly a big deal. >why should they burn a Linux 0day Those are a dime in a dozen, and using an exploit very rarely means burning it. And even if the adversary didn't have a linux 0day to use on you, you'd almost certainly still be screwed sooner or later as they'd now have persistent local access to your system. Odds are that you'd never notice a cronjob running as debian-tor, pinging the attackers c&c once a day. It really is game over once someone gets arbitrary code execution on your system, unless you maintain an extraordinary security posture which would preclude installing sketchy huawei drivers anyway.