Macbook Battery Hacked?

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?

 

The security researcher who found it claims that he'll release a tool soon, but as far as I know there's been no official word from Apple. They are their usual uncommunicative selves and could really learn a thing or two from Microsoft's security department.

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