A newly discovered exploit may not only allow hackers to drain your laptop battery, but also use it to kill you. While not quite like having C4 planted inside your gaming rig, it may cause some absurdly superstitious people to think twice before using their laptop.
Discovered by Charlie Miller, a security researcher known for hacking Safari, the exploit allows a hacker to take control of a Macbook battery’s voltage current controls. The hacker can then fool the system into thinking the battery is undercharged, making the controller overcharge the cell, possibly causing a fire or even an explosion:
“Lithium-ion batteries are potentially dangerous, and it’s possible that futzing with the parameters could cause the battery to fail at best, or explode at worst,” Miller said. “I know there are internal fuses and other safeguards to prevent that from happening, and I never did it myself, but there’s certainly potential to get some malware to rewrite the smart battery firmware and cause some catastrophic failure.”
The hack is made possible due to a blunder by Apple in using default passwords for the microcontroller that interacts with the Smart Battery System, thus allowing a complete rewrite of the SBS’s firmware.
While far-fetched, it would most definitely not be pleasant if your laptop/tablet/phone were to suddenly explode in your face; whether it’s an act of vengeance or just for teh lulz. Be sure to keep this away from Lulzsec. And Skynet. And this guy.
Source:
Ars Technica
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Well that doesn’t sound good, nice work Apple, you managed to turn hackers into bombers.
I installed the newton virus onto every single one of my friends that had macbookss several times.
macs lol. just cause no one writes viruses for them doesn’t mean they’re secure.
As terrible as that, is, I must admit it is rather creative. However, it’s because of reasons like this I have had an anti-virus program running on my Macbook Pro since the day I got it.