How on earth did this guy hack a macbook battery? I though hacking from far was limited to software; hardware hacking is actually getting down and dirty with the pcb right?
Update: the news is out on physorg.com as well
-
The battery has firmware (software) that controls it. Many modern (all?) laptop batteries come with firmware as I understand it.
Apple just botched the security by using a default password for the write mechanism. -
Thanks @preview
Is there a way to close this hole? -
I wouldn't sweat it though as this isn't that big a deal. I don't think there's any malware out there at the moment taking advantage of this hole and even if there were it would still require root access. It can't be exploited without user interaction.
The old security best practice still holds; don't run strange applications and don't enter your password if you're randomly prompted for it and you should be fine. -
@preview Thanks mate
Macbook Battery Hacked?
Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by di1in, Jul 26, 2011.