[oroup]

Given that the ME has full access to the NIC, outbound traffic could be concealed onboard traffic that is already outbound. If the adversary has also compromised network routers, the traffic could be observed and decoded without explicitly being sent anywhere.

Similarly inbound control signals could be delivered by modifying inbound traffic that the ME observed and decided.

Depending on your throughput needs the signal could be delivered subtly by for example modifying the timing between packets in a way that would be very hard to identify as a signal.

I’m hoping the ME firmware Now gets dumped and studied closely. I’m betting there are some surprises in there

[collinmanderson]

It's still possible to monitor that traffic, especially at the corporate firewall level, or use a Raspberry Pi, or use an old, pre-ME computer.

Until there is evidence, this is technically just a government conspiracy theory.

[unixhero]

It isn't a conspiracy when the feared idea has been confirmed. There is a separate os running on the cpu to monitor and control each and every single one of new intel machines.

[collinmanderson]

Right, but there's no confirmation of any remote access or spying going on.