Miller, currently a researcher with the consultancy Accuvant, has made an intensive research on the batteries provided by Apple laptops. And the results are quite disturbing, Miller has found a serious security loophole via these batteries, that kills or corrupts batteries, or even to make them explode! Miller has provided a detailed description of the security issue of here - blogs.forbes.com, however here is the summary of the issue.Modern laptop batteries contain a Microcontroller, which helps the OS to determine the power characteristics. It helps the OS realise the battery's charge, the level of voltage required etc. Miller found that these microcontrollers were fused into Apple laptops with a default password. So once you find this password, you can hack it to do a wide variety of malfunctions. A few of the fancied attacks would be
- Permanently ruining batteries
- Implanting them with hidden malware that infects the computer no matter how many times software is reinstalled or even potentially causing the batteries to heat up, catch fire or explode.
Miller has created a fix for this, and with Black Hat, he is planning to release a tool called Caulkgun that changes their battery firmware’s passwords to a random string, preventing the default password attack he used.
