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Ask HN: Can anybody please explain this hack?

2 pointsby GWBullshit9 days ago
Suppose you were having a conversation with a demonstrably capable hacker and it doesn&#x27;t go so well, after which, the following happens:<p>- You hear what sounds almost like a power generator going off in the distance, except it&#x27;s a &quot;softer&quot;, more &quot;bass&quot;-boosted and buzzing sound and doesn&#x27;t have that final &quot;crackle&quot; exploding sound at the end; more like a slowed-down version of the sounds leading up to that final &quot;generator blew out during the storm&quot; sound - During this, the light in your room noticeably dims for a brief moment, but then goes back to normal (the nearby cable TV box if fine, not rebooting or anything) - However, your laptop (Mac, if it makes a difference) that you reasonably recently updated the battery for at a reputable, licensed location inexplicably shuts off (no warning, no fan overheating sound (no fan at all, actually), not a lot of apps open to stress processor or memory - Your laptop at this moment was not just fully charged, but also plugged in - The laptop self-reboots, whereupon you notice your battery charge is now inexplicably &quot;0%&quot;; opening up the settings panel, the graph shows that your laptop was in fact fully charged until just a moment ago when the charge inexplicably nose-dived to &quot;0%&quot; (when that outdoor &quot;power generator humming buzzing sound happened and the light dimmed) - This part didn&#x27;t happen exactly this way and I don&#x27;t want to go into details of how it did happen, but let&#x27;s say something like this happened: Upon your laptop rebooting, let&#x27;s say there is an open sticky note or a notepad app that inexplicably opens also and something like the following was typed in: &quot;Hope you saved your work at (hour)(minute) on (day)(date)&quot; – so basically you do not have doubts that &quot;this was no accident&quot;<p>My question is 2-fold: (1) How is it possible to instantly discharge your laptop&#x27;s battery so that it goes from 100% to 0% in a split second, and, more importantly (2) how is it possible to rewrite your laptop&#x27;s &quot;whatever&quot; so that if the battery suddenly has 0% charge, the hardware is reset to ignore the fact that it can draw power from also being plugged in?<p>I&#x27;m not expecting (though I&#x27;d love) any &quot;As a hacker who used to do just this sort of thing to people, I know exactly how they did it&quot; answers, but ANY ideas about how this may have been possible would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

4 comments

GWBullshit9 days ago
Also, (if it makes any difference): I&#x27;ve had hacks happen before where the method used was to instantly spike the processor&#x27;s heat to force an emergency shut-off (couldn&#x27;t find any indications of sudden spikes in application memory&#x2F;processor usage that would have explained this).<p>But this time the laptop temperature was perfectly normal and there was no indication of sudden heat spikes.
azail9 days ago
Nice creative writing exercise. I hope you&#x27;re not expecting serious answers though as this is rather daft, like a plot off a low budget film.
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GaryNumanVevo9 days ago
If this actually happened, the best defense is buying a carbon monoxide detector and making sure it&#x27;s tested regularly
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bigyabai9 days ago
I used to do this to people but I&#x27;m bound by NDA to not tell you how it works. Scares the shit outta grandma though.
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