I know this newspaper article sounds absurd.  Even if a machine is compromised we (should) have hardware safe guards in all our devices to prevent the software from damaging the hardware.  But is it possible to make a computer explode or catch fire?   Has this ever been done?



In 2011 the news was reporting on HP Printers catching fire. HP Responded saying that there was a hardware element called a "thermal breaker" to prevent this from happening.  The researcher never produced a burning pile of printer. 

Also in 2011 Charlie Miller was researching the firmware on Apple's batteries trying to get them to explode or catch fire. 
However the worst he was able to do was brick the battery. 

Edit Feb 2014 - CrowdStrike demonstrated an attack at RSA on a Mac which overrode temperature controls, powered off the fans and spiked the CPU usage in order to overheat the machine. And while this specific example was limited as fires are not welcomed in the Moscone Centre, the ateam state that they can cause the machine to catch fire.

Now lets flash back to 1985. The Therac-25 radiation therapy machine is killing people  due to a bug in how the software interacted with hardware.  An eariler model had "Hardware Interlocks" which prevented the operator from accidentally overdosing patents with radation.

All of the devices we use should have a hardware control preventing software from damaging the physical world.

But there are some systems where its impractical for hardware to prevent all damage to physical systems. This is the real fear behind vulnerabilities in SCADA systems. It maybe possible for an attacker to remove safety controls used by a power plant or put it into an unstable state.

An example of this happening in real life is Stuxnet being used to destroy centrifuges. There is some evidence to suggest that a hacker was the cause of a missile explosion at an Iranian Military base.  So if the computer happens to also be a bomb,  then yes,  a hacker can probably make it explode.
