MacBook batteries susceptible to hack attacks Now that Apple has endowed the Mac operating system with state-of-the-art security protections, a researcher has devised new attacks that target the machine's battery. Charlie Miller, well known for his numerous attacks on iPhones and Macs, may not have achieved his ultimate objective of making a Mac spontaneously combust, but …
Mac's aren't exactly immune to remote code execution attacks. It wouldn't take much more than a booby trapped website (www.makemymacgoboom.com? Anyone bought that one yet?) to run the necessary code on anyone's Mac who happened to visit it.
Human nature being what it is, it will only be a matter of time before some script kiddie tries to detonate Macs all around the world simultaneously courtesy of a trojan payload with a timed execution time, "just for the fun of it".
Will make sure that the Internet gets shut down to stop something like this if it is released, no questions asked.
Its a matter of potentially thousands of fires within a short space of time, no way will they let this happen without a fight.
Maybe Obama might get to use the infamous Internet Kill Switch aka the Big Red Button.
AC/DC
So, Lion is more secure, more robust.....
Lets see:
a) we have bad pre-emption by vendors - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/22/mac_lion_kills_celerra/ - yes, they should have run beta versions.
b) we have bad assumptions by writers - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/21/mac_os_x_lion_security/
If I can kill a machine by attacking the battery, how is this more secure than any other operating system?
Me thinks writers are too quick to spout off about the newest, bestest OS for xx-machine out there.
Geez, at least let it run a month before deciding how good or bad it is!
I wondered when the rock bottom level of stupidity would finally reach The Reg.
The writers are still as fantastic as they've ever been - and do attend the conferences (Hi John - how are you?)
But the commentards... do you now need to fail a technology IQ test to post...?
It would certainly apply to other vendors who are stupid enough to have batteries that can have firmware arbitrarily updated... But at this stage, Apple is singled out because that's the vendor it's been discovered with. Until someone goes and checks other vendors products, no one will know.
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/07/22/apple-laptops-vulnerable-to-hack-that-kills-or-corrupts-batteries/
I would say that other vendors using similar batteries will have a similar issue as Apple. Miller is a Mac security expert and only looks at Mac. The fact that he is the first to discover it, indicates how obscure this attack is. However, I am certain that Apple and others will produce at update to create a random password.
I am certain Mr Miller had direct access via Terminal to do this hack.
So long as Mac users run their main account as Standard and not Admin, intelligent users are well protected, plus if the upgrade to Lion they will be even more protected.
Wait until airport security finds out about this. We've seen the Dell batteries catching fire, and now we find out that laptop batteries can be hijacked remotely and set to explode. No more laptops on planes, and this after the MacBook Air just got the Transportation Security Administration's approval for carry-on luggage without suspicion.
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