Hoax or not, the article on ARS Electronica is full of technical nonsense like this, for example:
" to plant hard-to-detect malware known as a rootkit in a computer's peripheral component interconnect, the Intel-developed connection that attaches hardware devices to a CPU."
A root kit embeds itself in the operating system kernel in order to mask its operation. This has nothing to do with a computers peripheral component interconnect.
Also, the argument that a Security Specialist is a good target for hackers is nonsense. If these things described really would work, this would be a highly advanced, very sophisticated attack. That kind of stuff takes a lot of expertise and time to put together and as such takes a lot of time and money. Resources on only organized crime or governments have available. Those guys are looking for Money. Discrediting or competing against a security expert is not in their interest whatsoever.
However, it is not unusual these days to find an article, while the underlying story is actually true, to be written by incompetent personnel attempting to dramatize and sensationalize a story to attract readers.