This is exactly the kind of hyperbolic nonsense I'm talking about. You can't claim that every HDD in existence has an NSA-installed backdoor installed in it without providing any evidence.

If the NSA's capabilities were nearly as extensive as you're claiming, the US wouldn't need to bother maintaining a military. They could just remotely command all of North Korea's computers to shut themselves off, then sit back and wait around for their surrender.

I'm not saying mass surveillance isn't a problem, or even that the NSA doesn't have a backdoor installed in IME (I certainly don't have evidence to the contrary); just that people need to stop exaggerating the threat, or making claims about the NSA having compromised any specific system without providing any evidence to back those claims up.

Remember when the US shut down NK's internet ? https://gizmodo.com/so-who-shut-down-north-koreas-internet-1...

Remember when the NSA was revealed to have a malware that could infect hard drives, being potentially undetectable ? https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ypwkwk/the-nsas-u...

Remember PRISM ? How about stuxnet, and the other couple of viruses that are almost surely the NSA's.

Sure, those are not backdoors installed by the OEM, rather they are malware that the NSA can use to infect (lots of) systems. But let's not kid ourselves, the NSA does have a ridiculous amount of power, and we have lots of evidence of it.

At this point I'd be rather surprised if the NSA haven't hacked my fridge yet somehow.

_Could_ the NSA have the ability to utilize IME somehow as a means to infect computers? Certainly. Do they _actually_ have that capability? We have no idea. Same goes for your motherboard's firmware, your hard drive's hardware, and any number of other possible vectors. They _could_ be compromised somehow, yes, but let's not claim that any specific motherboard firmware, HDD model, or CPU processor brand definitely _is_ compromised without evidence.

There is an equivalent article from Ars technica, if "theregister" isn't to your liking.

As for the evidence on routers and Internet infrastructure, you should pay more attention to leaks of state-sponsored tools, like the equation group leaks and the CIA one.