MacBook battery vulnerability

Charlie Miller, a researcher at the consulting office Accuvant and co-author of “The Mac Hacker's Handbook”, has found a flaw in the security of the MacBook laptops, which refers to the poorly studied area - the battery.

Apple’s laptops, MacBook, MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, show the weakest link in the chip that controls the battery. The microcontroller monitors the distribution of power and allows the operating system to check the battery charge. It also performs temperature control and termination of charging when the computer is off. Access to these chips is done via the default passwords and with their revelation stealing of the software and taking complete control could be achieved. With knowledge of these passwords an attacker can install malicious code on the chip and thus reveal sensitive information and crash the vulnerable computer. Miller notes that although there is a real possibility of battery explosion specific safety system is designed to prevent such events. Also, he plans to present a security problem and bring the solution on the Black Hat conference in August, presenting the tool called ““Caulkgun–. More information can be found at Yahoo News web site.