(This post was originally published on the IGN Blogs in 2011)
Apple fanboys tend to live in a world where they think Apple products are above viruses and hacks. Yet, for those of us who know better, that is not the case. In fact, Apple products are the easiest to hack. Just take a look at the Pwn2Own contests that take place, such as this year’s contest, and you will see how easily Apple falls.
Yet, despite the ease of such endeavors, hackers don’t bother because it just isn’t very profitable or even worth the effort to hack Apple products. However a researcher, named Charlie Miller, will be demoing a hack that will be very bad for Apple. This hack, which Miller will be demoing, is an alarming one.
Simply put, Miller has come up with a way to take control of the batteries in Apple laptops and completely destroy them; even cause them to catch on fire.
So how can Miller do this?
Well, what makes this possible is due to current laptops coming equipped with smarter batteries which know when to turn off when fully charged. This is done in order to conserve energy while in sleep mode and other functions which help to extend and maximize battery life. Of course, this is all done through a controller chip which oversees battery activity and it is that chip which Miller’s hack focuses on.
These controller chips, shipped by Apple, come with their passwords set to default which makes things easier for hackers to exploit. An exploit that Charlie Miller found while looking through the update file of a 2009 Macbook. This discovery would allow Miller to leave Malware on the controller chip which would infect the laptop continually, every time the laptop is powered up, or cause the battery to explode.
What I find puzzling is that Miller is being asked, by security analysts, to stop his research because it would be too dangerous. Given how serious this hack is I have to wonder why they would ask him to stop in the first place. Especially since he will be providing Apple a fix, called Caulkgun, which will change the controller chip’s password to a series of numbers.
After all, if Miller was able to find this exploit, how long would it be until someone else found it? At least this way there is a fix for the problem before it can be used to hurt people. Otherwise, Apple would be scrambling to find a fix while being served with a class-action lawsuit by people who were seriously injured by exploding laptops.
However, given the fact of there being cases in which Apple laptops have exploded prior to Miller’s work, it makes me wonder whether or not they were the result of faulty batteries or those of a hacker.
(Note: The recent attack by Israel through the use of pagers and walkie talkies, reminded me of this post I wrote so long ago. I will definitely be doing a follow-up to this.)
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