This article is full of inaccurate or misleading information.

It can be tempting to see this as a big conspiracy. These big corporations—Intel and hardware manufacturers—are preventing us from running the software we want to run on our own computers, as if we were using some underpowered, locked-down Surface RT instead of a powerful PC we’re supposed to have control of.

And sure, that’s true, but Boot Guard does help secure the UEFI firmware and protect against malware that infects the boot process. Intel and PC OEMs aren’t out to crush free software and prevent open hardware. The truth is more mundane—Intel and hardware manufacturers prioritize tighter security for the masses over the proprietary firmware concerns of a few.

Intel isn’t out to crush free software — rather, they don’t care about it all as long as they are getting paid. PC OEMs are however out to crush free software as it makes them less money, and the same for Microsft et. al.

BIOS and firmware-infecting worms and viruses are very, very rare in the wild and always have been, even before this sort of “security.” They are very difficult to write and not nearly as effective as attacks that compromise already relatively-insecure applications and operating systems.

Nope, the only reason to have Boot Guard and similar technologies is to prevent people from running what they want to run on their own machines. That’s all. Has absolutely nothing to do with security in any way — that’s just the pretext, the excuse.