Apple Laptop Batteries Can Be Hacked And Used To Steal Sensative ...

Charlie Miller, an Apple <a href="http://www.headphonesell.com/"><strong>monster beats</strong></a> security enthusiast, has discovered a way to completely disable the batteries on Apple laptops, making them permanently unusable, and able to perform a number of other unintended actions. Now I know what you must be thinking – how could a battery be hacked? Isn’t it just, well, a battery? Well you see, in any modern Laptop battery there is a microcontroller (think of it as a brain for the battery) in place that controls different aspects of the battery and allows the laptop to communicate to and from the battery. This Microcontroller allows the lithium ion batteries to know when to stop charging even when the computer is powered off, and can regulate their own heat for safety purposes. As this microcontroller contains an independent firmware from the main OS (operating system) security researcher Charlie Miller was able to exploit the microcontroller to actually gain full root access to the battery. Charlieè�½Miller comments: “With <a href="http://www.headphonesell.com/"><strong>monster beats headphones</strong></a> full root access this lets you access it at the same level as the factory can,” he said. “You can read all the firmware, make changes to the code, do whatever you want. And those code changes will survive a reinstall of the OS, so you could imagine writing malware that could hide on the chip on the battery. You’d need a vulnerability in the OS or something that the battery could then attack, though.” After further experimentation in the lab Miller was able to brick the battery so that it wouldn’t take a charge or discharge any power. He said it is even possible to send faulty instructions <a href="http://www.headphonesell.com/monster-headphones-c-1.html"><strong>monster beats by dre</strong></a> to the OS, giving it bad information about the level of power left in the battery. Furthermore, Miller points out the possibility for malware to be developed that could actually reside in the batteryè�½that could infect the rest of the computer to steal data, control its functions, or cause it to crash. One thing I am sure that is on everyone’s mind by now is – would it be possible to make the battery “explode” or “melt-down“? This same thought has crossed Charlie Miller’s mind and he comments: “I started out thinking I wanted to see if a bad guy could make your laptop blow up. But that didn’t happen,” he said. “There are all kinds of things engineers build into these batteries to make them safe, and this is just one of them. I don’t know if you could really melt the thing down.” Charlie Miller plans to reveal this battery exploit in more depth and will even release a tool at Black Hat <a href="http://photomax.fb5.ru/displayimage.php?pos=-31"><strong>Shop Online for Laptop AC Adapter for Acer Aspire One A110, A150 ...</strong></a> that will change the defaultè�½passwords on the battery’s processor so that the hacks he developed won’t work. He has even tried contacting Apple to discuss this dangerous exploit with them, but he has received no word back from them at this time (no surprise). What do you think about Charlie Miller’s exploit? Does it worry you? Let us know in the comments section below… [Via ThreatPost &amp; Forbes]