Hacker News Reader

"In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user." [emphasis added]

View on HN

US manufacturers sold pre-bugged equipment to the eastern bloc during the cold war, so why not now?

Today it is just a well publicly known feature of modern Intel CPU (officially it is stated to be disabled on some CPUs :)

http://www.realvnc.com/products/viewerplus/

"Computers with particular Intel® Core™ vPro™ processors enjoy the benefit of a VNC-compatible Server embedded directly onto the chip, enabling permanent remote access and control. A RealVNC collaboration with Intel's ground-breaking hardware has produced VNC Viewer Plus, able to connect even if the computer is powered off, or has no functioning operating system."

well publicly known feature

I sure didn't know about it, and wish I did. I'd love to be able to use it!

Is there any easy way to make this work (and to check if your computer supports it)?

This has some more info, no idea how much it applies to current tech.

http://blog.michael.kuron-germany.de/2011/10/using-intel-amt...

EDIT: and some more current stats

http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2012/04/23/intelr-vpro...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com