I mentioned SplashTop before and whilst it looked like it was safely locked to the motherboard, the folks at Phoronix just demonstrated that it can be hacked.

This is both a good and a bad thing. Good because you might be able to customize applications that will be available on SplashTop in addition to Firefox, etc. Imagine, being able to run the webcam without booting up - now that will be cool for video bloggers. :)

It is bad because it makes it possible to add malicious applications and making it run before anything else. However, it might be extremely unattractive for those blackhat hackers but if this technology becomes used widely by the industry, then expect them to quickly release their warez.

[Image from Phoronix]