A remote hijacking flaw that lurked in Intel chips for seven years was more severe than many people imagined , because it allowed hackers to remotely gain administrative control over huge fleets of computers without entering a password . This is according to technical analyses published Friday . Further ReadingIntel patches Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability remote hijacking vulnerability that lurked in chips for 7 years . As Ars reported Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability Monday , the authentication bypass vulnerability resides in Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability a feature known as Active Management Technology . AMT , as it 's usually called , allows system administrators to perform a variety of powerful tasks over a remote connection . Among the capabilities : changing the code that boots up computers , accessing the computer 's mouse , keyboard , and monitor , loading and executing programs , and remotely powering on computers that are turned off . In short , AMT makes it possible to log into a computer and exercise the same control enjoyed by administrators with physical access . AMT , which is available with many vPro processors , was set up to require a password before it could be remotely accessed over a Web browser interface . But , remarkably , that authentication mechanism can be bypassed by entering no text at all . According to a blog post published Friday by Tenable Network Security , the cryptographic hash that the interface 's digest access authentication requires to verify someone is authorized to log in can be anything at all , including no string at all . `` Authentication still worked '' even when the wrong hash was entered , Tenable Director of Reverse Engineering Carlos Perez wrote . `` We had discovered a complete bypass of the authentication scheme . '' A separate technical analysis from Embedi , the security firm Intel credited with first disclosing Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability the vulnerability , arrived at the same conclusion . Embedi e-mailed the analysis to reporters , but did n't publish it online . Making matters worse , unauthorized accesses typically are n't logged by the PC because AMT has direct access to the computer 's network hardware . When AMT is enabled , all network packets are redirected to the Intel Management Engine and from there to the AMT . The packets bypass the OS completely . The vulnerable management features were made available in some but not all Intel chipsets starting in 2010 , Embedi has said . In a blog post published Friday , Intel officials said they expect PC makers to release Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability a patch next week . The releases will update Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability Intel firmware , meaning patching Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability will require that each vulnerable chip set is reflashed . In the meantime , Intel is urging customers to download and run this discovery tool to diagnose potentially vulnerable computers . Systems that test positive should be temporarily secured using this mitigation guide until a patch is supplied Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability . Computer makers Fujitsu , HP , and Lenovo , have also issued advisories for specific models they sell .