Re: Apple's bug description
Apple may not manufacture their own laptops, but they do write their own software - including parts of the EFI (not, unfortunately, the crap ME stuff Intel is responsible for) so it isn't clear how much blame goes to Apple and how much goes to Foxconn or Pegatron or whoever makes Macbooks and might have been responsible for turning off manufacturing mode after post assembly testing. The fact Apple was able to fix it in a patch shows that they could have / should have anticipated this as a possibility and had the software disable manufacturing mode by default (if it was already off, no harm done)
This is just another in the growing list of reasons that Apple might want to kick Intel to the curb and use their ARM cores in Macbooks. Not that Apple is immune to software bugs, but ME seems to be particularly crap software that has obviously been wide open for years relying on "security through obscurity" for the fact that attacks started becoming known only recently. It is reasonable to expect there are many more ME related attacks yet to be discovered as security researchers continue to poke and prod that software.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
