According to Charlie Miller, a hacker could attack our MacBook batteries

Nakedsecurity

They are specific cases and generally less dangerous than in the rest of the systems, but you still have to be careful. Today we have another reason to do so, thanks to Charlie Miller , an expert in finding computer and operating system weaknesses based on reverse engineering.

Charlie has been tracking the firmware in MacBook batteries for some time, and has come to the conclusion that a skilled hacker could break into that firmware and modify the battery’s behavior to his liking (for example, he could tell it to never stop charging so it would end up breaking down and even burning up). The battery has its own chip and software, so theoretically you only need to know what you are doing and get administration rights for that computer.

The good news is that we’re not talking about a closed problem with MacBook batteries caused by a slip in Cupertino. Any other computer could suffer the same attack , and yet modern batteries have “locks” in the form of liquids that dissolve in the battery avoiding chemical reactions that could set it on fire. As always, the best thing we can do is to know how to protect our systems well – thanks to our reader Tony Torres for sending us the news!

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