Just as quickly as some were hailing Mac OS X Lion for improved security, MacRumors references a report from The Register that discusses a vulnerability in the chips that control the batteries in Apple’s notebooks. This discovery, by Charlie Miller, principal research consultant at security firm Accuvant and the other coauthor of The Mac Hacker’s Handbook, indicates a vulnerability could be exploited on a basic level to harm battery function or with additional effort to implant malware that could reinfect computers multiple times.

The article continues: “The batteries’ chips are shipped with default passwords, such that anyone who discovers that password and learns to control the chips’ firmware can potentially hijack them to do anything the hacker wants. That includes permanently ruining batteries at will, and may enable nastier tricks like implanting them with hidden malware that infects the computer no matter how many times software is reinstalled or even potentially causing the batteries to heat up, catch fire or explode. “These batteries just aren’t designed with the idea that people will mess with them,” Miller says. “What I’m showing is that it’s possible to use them to do something really bad.”

We realize when it comes to hacking that, if there’s a will there’s a way. We’re just a little surprised at how quickly this vulnerability came out. Hopefully it’s not a sign of things to come. Hopefully.