While the traditional means of hacking is through the internet and email, there is now another way that hackers can ruin your day. Accuvant security researcher Charlie Miller reports that hackers can now target the batteries of Apple devices. MacBook laptops have their own firmware and processor, and it’s through these that hackers can compromise the battery.
Miller went through the updates for the battery that Apple released in 2009. He found two passwords that allowed him to access an onboard chip in the batter. He said, “you can read all the firmware, make changes to the code, do whatever you want.” Miller also said that whatever code changes were done survive an OS reinstall. In other words, malware could hide on that onboard chip in the battery.
While Apple wasn’t commenting on what Miller found out about the battery, he will be speaking about it a Black Hat security conference next month in Las Vegas. He said that at the very least the battery could be made inoperable, but he didn’t know if you could make the battery blow up the laptop. He thinks this is because there are many safeguards built into the batteries by the manufacturers’ engineers.
Some bloggers have said that Miller is reaching for any security issue he could find on the MacBook because the new Lion iOS is considered to be quite secure. Others say that the chances of someone actually exploiting the battery processor is very slim; however, there are those who will use any means when it comes to hacking. Meanwhile, Miller has contacted Apple and Texas Instruments to inform them of the vulnerability in hopes that a patch can be issued before the conference next month. It’s not known at this time if either company feels this should be addressed or not.
