News
News Categories

Apple Laptop Batteries the Next Backdoor for Hackers

By Hurrairah bin Sohail - on 25 Jul 2011, 10:20am

Apple Laptop Batteries the Next Backdoor for Hackers

For those who are not familiar with Charlie Miller, the security expert is well known among tech circles as someone who loves using oddball and off-kilter methods to expose security flaws in computer systems. As a winner of multiple Pwn2Own competitions and prior work in sniffing out Mac OS X flaws (which was later patched) when Charlie Miller reports his findings, everyone takes notice.

His latest venture is to find a way to hack into your Apple notebook using its own batteries. Going on rumors and hunches, he was able to decompile an Apple update in 2009 and find that the OS and the battery communication was protected via two passwords which users were unable to change. This opens up some really interesting possibilities for hackers out there in webspace.

itwire.com - "You could put a whole hard drive in, reinstall the software, flash the BIOS, and every time it would reattack and screw you over. There would be no way to eradicate or detect it other than removing the battery." says Miller.

For the extremely paranoid, Charlie Miller has already developed an antidote by the name of Caulkgun. However installing it will stop you from getting an battery related updates for your Apple laptop. For now, he has not found any way to turn your laptop into an explosive device so we can rest safely for now.

Source. itwire.com

 

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.