Security researcher Charlie Miller, widely known for his work on Mac OS X and Apple's iOS, has discovered an interesting method that enables him to completely disable the batteries on Apple laptops, making them permanently unusable, and perform a number of other unintended actions.



From threadpost:

The basis of Miller's research, which he plans to present at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas next month, is the battery that's used in most Apple laptops. The battery, like many others in modern laptops, has a chip on it that contains instructions for how the battery is meant to behave and interact with the operating system and other components. Inspired by Barnaby Jack's ATM hacking talk at last year's conference, Miller was interested in seeing what would happen if he could get access to the chip and start messing with the instruction set and firmware.

  Apple Laptop Batteries Can Be Bricked, Firmware Hacked