Exactly, so it's not so productive for NSA to tinker with SELinux just to get their trojan in the gate.
IMNO, hardware backdoor on the processors is a bit skeptical, though. I'm no expert on this but I don't know how easy to even exploit this type of backdoor without an assistance from the OS kernel. (Which MS might have implemented somehow.)
If properly done in hardware, it needs no help from anything. Think about CPU "data breakpoints" - breakpoints that trigger if a specified if a specific value gets written to a specific range.
It's really a no-brainer to make such breakpoints that watch data in memory or registers that will be triggered by (e.g.) just processing a specific DNS packet.
Yeah, I suppose. I thought it'd be a bit more challenging to get the data out. I suppose they could do drop and retrieve, or attach some air-interface, etc.
Once they have root, they can use the existing resources just like you would a regular PC, but chances are they would load their own micro-kernel to do the dirty work.
IMNO, hardware backdoor on the processors is a bit skeptical, though. I'm no expert on this but I don't know how easy to even exploit this type of backdoor without an assistance from the OS kernel. (Which MS might have implemented somehow.)