July 27, 2011

Hackers can exploit Apple’s new battery technology and cause laptops to explode, says security expert

by ruchi

Apple’s latest laptop series like Macbook, Macbook Air and Macbook Pro note are known to feature this new “smart” batter technology that seeks to provide users with added control over power management. Hackers have found a glitch here and as reports suggest, owing to this feature alone, they can prevent batteries from charging and also cause them to explode.

The new battery technology is the culprit here for its microcontroller chip an be accessed remotely using a default password shared by each and every notebook. Obviously the batteries were never designed so as to let people mess with them; it is just that white-collared hackers have brought this to attention that this could be misused. A security expert by the name Charlie Miller is going explain the vulnerability with a demo at the at the Black Hat security conference next month. He would also showcase a fix for it and we hope that Apple implements it soon.
[BGR]