Virtualization solves a lot of these problems, but a lot of my milspec friends have been expressing concerns about APTs that jailbreak the virtual environment to attack the underlying physical host.
It will be interesting to see how the human element of networks evolves over time.
I'm thinking back to the HDD firmware hack[1] that was on HN earlier this week -- if a HDD was exposed directly to a VM, that would definitely be a plausible attack vector.
Yes, you're correct on the definition. I don't wanna go look it up but there's a good one about an embedded attack hidden in an internal PCI board's on board memory.
If someone with $100M wants to get you, they're probably gonna find a way.
It will be interesting to see how the human element of networks evolves over time.