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From SecurityFocus

Linkie: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11372

Story lead-in:
Researchers: Rootkits headed for BIOS
Robert Lemos, SecurityFocus 2006-01-26

ARLINGTON, Virginia -- Insider attacks and industrial espionage could become more stealthy by hiding malicious code in the core system functions available in a motherboard's flash memory, researchers said on Wednesday at the Black Hat Federal conference.
Also another quote from the article that SecurityFocus also highlighted:
"It is going to be about one month before malware comes out to take advantage of this," said Greg Hoglund, a rootkit expert and CEO of reverse engineering firm HBGary. "This is so easy to do. You have widely available tools, free compilers for the ACPI language, and high-level languages to write the code in."
And yet another quote - in regards to the one of the vectors of attack:
However, an insider attacker could flash their laptop before they leave a company and then use the rootkit, which would survive reinstallation of the operating system. The insider could then gain access to the corporate network at a later time.
Also a link to the Black Hat Federal Conference - information on who gave the speech, John Heasman, NGSSoftware:
http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-fede...s.html#Heasman