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Are remote management functions of portable consumer electronics (i.e.: remotely wiping your iPad) also supported by similar hardware chips from other vendors?

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There is a laptop theft recovery/tracking software called LoJack for Laptops (AKA CompuTrace). Some laptop manufactures have added BIOS support for this service (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc). According to the Wikipedia article [1] this BIOS service copies a downloader into the System32 folder on Windows, which then downloads the full service. It doesn't appear that the BIOS service itself is remotely exploitable, however it can be used for persistent root-kits [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoJack_for_Laptops [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoJack_for_Laptops#Vulnerabili...

What does this mean?

IPad remote wipe is a function of IOS and the encrypted filesystem it uses on the device, not the CPU.

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