What are the implications of such hardware on user security? Threat persistence, i.e. persistent rootkits, persistent remote monitoring if one has privs to tic

What are the implications of such hardware on user security? Threat persistence, i.e. persistent rootkits, persistent remote monitoring if one has privs to tickle the CPU instructions that give access. It is just a matter of time before there are public tools for script kiddies to manage the OS within the CPU. Here [1] is an example of someone slowly making progress decoding all the undocumented instructions and here is a talk with a brief overview of the tools. [2] This is not specific to Intel's ME but it is the way people will eventually tame/exploit that beast in my opinion. There are more recent talks that get deeper into security rings in the CPU. This video [3] more related to your question but not specific to ME however can be used to access ME and much more. If this appears to difficult and time consuming just know that some folks out there have the documentation for the undocumented instructions. You may find some tools on github and other public repos for disabling ME. Use with care. Test on an identical model of system that is at the same firmware/BIOS and same model of CPU as those tools can brick your CPU. As @rocket_surgeron stated, one can buy CPU's with ME disabled but that will not disable the "God Mode" referenced in [3]. [1] - https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrksBdWcZgQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrksBdWcZgQ [3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmTwlEh8L7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmTwlEh8L7g