Oddbean new post about login | logout Yes I’m aware of that, but there have also been leaks suggesting that there were ways CIA and co used to trigger battery fires in devices in the past as well. It just made it very real that they would be more than willing to do that if they considered certain people inconvenient enough and I now can’t help but wonder if they can literally just do that on the same way they can use Pegasus to just completely own any major platform mobile device.
Agreed. The scale here is the terrifying thing to me. The ability to attack entire collectives with one push of the button in surgical fashion. It's like a more effective tactical nuke.
A properly designed device can't cause a battery fire with software alone, it would have to be hardware modified. Any EE worth their salt would know to incorporate a physical protection circuit, such as a DW01 with the two accompanying MOSFETs, into any li-ion cell powered device that can have a failure mode that overloads the battery. Not saying that every EE is worth their salt though, especially regarding things bought online in places like Ebay, Temu, etc.