You make some good points, and I hope you are right.
But implementing in hardware in the chipset would need no software or OS
or anything else at all, hardware buffer for the keystrokes, compare
incoming request in on board ethernet versus (encrypted likely) Hwaddr
send to (encryped) url, be done, OS would not know.
Sort of the ultimate backdoor, right there on the mobo
You're talking about involving the firmware of a motherboard to
reprogram the motherboard chipset and NIC chip, all of which are made
by dozens of different companies. This would be damn near impossible
to get functioning outside of single test-cases (change any one of the
above and it all breaks) and would cause all sorts of random other
problems, all for something that would be TOTALLY rejected by
everyone, and they DO have a choice here?
If it can be done it will be done.
If something it unwanted by the vast majority of people, can be
avoided VERY easily (by replacing any of the three components
mentioned above), is mostly out of the control of any one company or
country... all the while there is a MUCH easier solution that is
entirely implemented by ONE company (Microsoft)?
Maybe by a Dr Strangelove, or some group with power in the gov, like that
Homeland group...
If you were in their position, well I would press for it to be implemented.
They can press all they want, but it's not going to do a like of good
to convince some Taiwanese motherboard makers to spend billions of
dollars implementing something that their customers are going to hate!
I think your fears here are rather misdirected. What we should be
worried about is the fact that Microsoft could do this all on their
own with NO trouble at all and it would be very difficult to detect
without a network sniffer. Hell, even a decent spyware app could be
sent out, possibly as a worm, by the DOBH (Dept. of Black Helicopters)
and 95%+ of users would never notice it.
