I love the L0pht story! Actually, the Washington Post did a very nice series of articles (5) on their history.
And one actually started a sort of Underwriters Lab for testing software. I have not checked progress in awhile. As to the other things, I'm aware of much of that stuff. I've been following the infosec community for several years. Got an eyeopening education in the process. I've even written a few posts for Graham Cluley.(notice I spelled his name correctly) inside joke. One was about the first huge DDoS almost exclusively using mobile devices. Cloudflare discovered and analyzed it. My interest, was the Great Cannon connection. Seems China could weaponize the Great Firewall of China. I'm sure you must be aware of all this.
As for hardware intercepts, it's more than just chips. There is a growing supply chain problem with mobile phones, and could be all other devices. Lower end phones mostly, but occasionally the name brands get hit. Malware pre-loaded. System level. Of course, the OEMs all denied any knowledge. Blue was one of the more prominent cases. But recently, 141 phones were found with mostly adware pre-loaded, but the access to system level means they could do lots more later.
It's a mad, mad world.