Something interesting I pondered upon a couple of days ago while buying a new motherboard...

Upon reading the new features supported in my new motherboard, I noticed it supported full software control of BIOS/CMOS features such as core CPU speed, fan speeds, CPU voltages, etc. You can adjust all of these setting not only through the CMOS interface at boot time, but also using packaged sofware included.

I wonder.... would it be possible for someone to write a virus or some other evil software that took advantage of this new feature and either ridiculously overclocked the CPU or killed off all the fans or some other antisocial act, causing the CPU to overheat and eventually fail/melt/explode in a ball of flame/pop/whatever, critically crippling your computer until you buy another one.

Is it even theoretically possible? And if all new motherboards are going to be made supporting this feature, how long is it going to be before a virus does the rounds that dosent only cause data damage, has the capacity to cause actual physical damage to a system. CPU's arn't cheap, I'd hate to see the total damage bill if something like that ever got out.

Whats anyones elses thoughts?