chuckup

I would just add, it took them nearly 4 years to add these guidelines!

>November 29, 2011 First publication

>July 8, 2015, 2015 Revision to include security guidance and requirements

I would be interested to see if any other manufacturers are doing this as well.

You can easily check: if a file called wpbbin.exe is in your windows\system32 directory, that means Windows found and executed code that was in your firmware.

Or, see if your autochk.exe hash isn't from Microsoft (paste the hash into virustotal) If OK, virustotal would say, "Trusted source! This file belongs to the Microsoft Corporation software catalogue."

I ask because last month, when I searched for "wpbbin.exe" I found lots of people who thought they had viruses, posting scan logs to various sites, and the scan logs mentioned this file as well as things that looked like Dell and HP stuff. "Wpbbin.exe" is a file that would only exist in your system32 if Windows found it in your firmware.

Very interesting, thanks for that link.

"If LSE is not enabled, it will not be shown under the “Security” tab in the system BIOS and the user is not affected"

FYI, This was not true for me - there was no option in the BIOS regarding this. So I'd say, the lack of this in your BIOS setup screen does NOT mean it is not there!

No - see my reply to the Ars thread. Windows 8 introduced an "official" way to do this called "Windows Platform Binary Table". Every time Windows boots, it checks your ACPI table for an entry called "WPBT", writes that to disk as "wpbbin.exe", and executes it. There does not seem to be any way to disable this behavior in Windows. Truecrypt would not help in this case because it happens after boot.

I just replied to the Ars thread - it's even stranger. Windows 8 and up have an officially Microsoft sanctioned way of letting manufacturers load software through Firmware, called "Windows Platform Binary Table". It means it is impossible to do a clean install of Windows now. I've seen zero mention of it anywhere - maybe Lenovo was the first to pull the trigger and make use of it recently.

There is no setting I can see to opt-out of what the Lenovo is doing. It's not an anti-theft software, it's software that makes popups appear, asking you to install their software.

> every civilization must regard every other civilization as an existential threat

I've wondered about this! If "the singularity" is something that really can happen, then perhaps it IS wise to fear any civilization that has developed basic computing, as it could quickly spawn an incredibly advanced, immortal being in a very short amount of time.

And if it can happen, then I'm sure at some point in history, an AI did take hold somewhere. Realizing how dangerous this whole singularity thing can be, it sought out the destruction of any biological life that could someday create their own singularity.

I've wondered if the Fermi paradox is simply that a few AI's developed long ago, and decided not to take any chances.