> The permanent security issue is that violating a security assertion (eg running an untrusted program) on your machine means you can never trust that machine u

> The permanent security issue is that violating a security assertion (eg running an untrusted program) on your machine means you can never trust that machine until it gets completely wiped. That hasn't been the case ever since firmware became updatable. Nowadays, even wiping the machine completely is not enough, because the firmware might have been maliciously modified by whatever violated the security boundary. And it might not even be the firmware you'd expect (the SPI chip containing the UEFI); see the recent post here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27740295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27740295) about someone who modified his laptop's EC firmware and his laptop's wireless card firmware, making the first intercept all key presses (the EC is also the keyboard controller) and send them to the second to be broadcast over the radio, completely invisible to both the operating system and the UEFI firmware.