I said "can be made to persist" and I meant, yes, that the malware could be compromising the firmware. And by "can" I implied that not all of it does, but the p

I said "can be made to persist" and I meant, yes, that the malware could be compromising the firmware. And by "can" I implied that not all of it does, but the possibility of it doing it does exist. Secure boot is indeed designed to protect against bootkits too.