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It doesn't matter if it's a deliberate backdoor or not. It's a door, and I want to be able to close that door if I'm not using it, and Intel won't let me. Reducing attack surface is a security best practice exactly because any software can have bugs.

An allegory: imagine if an OS ran an SSH server and there was no way to turn it off or to control the keys it accepts. Maybe it has no bugs (you can't see the source code). Maybe it has no malicious intent or backdoors. As a security conscious computer owner, I still view its existence as a negative. I would like to be able to provably turn it off or control the keys it accepts.



And that's exactly what matters and why I among many others call it a backdoor.

Telnet on the other hand is a service that I can switch off or block with far less work involved in normal circumstances.

To get rid of Intel ME I'd need to use Core-/LibreBoot and install it in a ritual that for a novice has something of a "black magic rite".


Forcing upon users is wrong but calling it backdoor, as someone who sounds reasonably intelligent to other reasonably intelligent people is misleading and wrong too.




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