>Look at Intel Boot Guard and all the stuff around that.
what am I looking for? It looks like you couldn't load third party/modified firmware with that enabled? I suppose it's strictly more locked down than being able to flash whatever firmware you want, but was there a sprawling scene of modified firmware around at that time? Or did everybody essentially run the stock firmware?
BIOS mods are not exactly common, but there's plenty of people doing it. Projects like coreboot are another example, and of course all the tools around removing as much of the ME as possible. Obviously the "fringe" gets slowly trimmed, and we should be looking out for those like we do canaries in a coalmine.
I'm not exactly sure how me_cleaner works, but AFAIK it still works even with intel bootguard? I believe the way it works is that intel ME are present in the bios as optional modules, and they can be removed without messing up the signature.
what am I looking for? It looks like you couldn't load third party/modified firmware with that enabled? I suppose it's strictly more locked down than being able to flash whatever firmware you want, but was there a sprawling scene of modified firmware around at that time? Or did everybody essentially run the stock firmware?