"Vulnerabilities in this interface can potentially allow a privileged userland process to escalate its privileges from ring 3 all the way up to that of the plat

"Vulnerabilities in this interface can potentially allow a privileged userland process to escalate its privileges from ring 3 all the way up to that of the platform firmware, which attains permanent control of the very-powerful System Management Mode." That's the part to get worried about right there - fiddling with SMM is Serious Business. For instance, it's the sort of place NSA hides rootkits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_Mode#Problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_Mode#Problems