> on the good side of things, getting an Intel CPU to enter the red state is not easy to accomplish. In fact, it should never happen unless there are vulnerabilities in the Intel Management Engine (ME), an almost undocumented subsystem present in all Intel CPUs since 2008 that Intel says is required to provide full performance.

"unless there are vulnerabilities or backdoors in the Intel Management Engine (ME)".

There, fixed it for you.

The IME itself is a backdoor in the first place. I remember a story a few years past when a full line of CPU's went out with IME having no password set at all, allowing a field day for hackers even when your computer was shut down but still receiving power on standby. Intel had to recall all of them but only after the news blew in media in the first place. Otherwise I'd suspect Intel would've just let it stay, cause money talks.

I'm in the minority, but I think IME is a great feature to have from a business/IT perspective. As a business, you own the computer, not the the user. And IME lets you provision/control it in at a lower level that most tools won't.

Which is fine, except I'm not a business and I _do_ own my computer, but I can't avoid IME.