Hardware destroying virus

[parad0x]

Hey guys, i was just curious if a  virus could be written which can overload the hardware so much that it gets burnt or something like that. It just came to my mind as most of the viruses simpl destroys the OS but as far as I know, none of them destroys the hardware.

[ande]

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: No because fail-safes and privileges. Yes because failures, root and firmware modification. If you can find a hardware component with no fail-safe regarding heat and or override/overwrite it, it could be possible to overheat it and cause damage to the hardware. But this will be very hardware specific.

[Kulverstukas]

It is possible and was done in the past. However it's very unlikely nowadays.
You didn't define the hardware you are speaking of, so generally speaking yes it is possible. There was a way to override the firmware of a MACBOOK battery to make it explode (sorta) and Stuxnet was built to destroy centrifuges in Iranian nuclear power plants by making them spin out of control.
Back in the day it was much easier to make computer hardware go poof and I know of one virus that was designed for that purpose, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrnWFAx5vJg

[proxx]

Many cheap built laptops are very poor at handling heat.
Certain CPU instructions will cause CPU's to burn very hot, specifics are often undisclosed and vendor/model specific.
This will not destroy a machine right away , however since most cheap laptops are really really poor when it comes to temperature management, due to components and poor design a long time exposure to high temperatures will cause malfunction.
From reality I know this can fuckup hardware pretty good, just not instant.
If the 'virus' is to remain there, seeks user inactivity and spikes that CPU to the max when this person is not on it one could do quite some damage, especially if its in a physical location that does not conduct heat very well.
Just trying to think out of the box here.

In the past things like HDD's where also targeted and effectively destroyed.
Not sure where we are nowadays when it comes to such attacks.

[Teapot]

The fail safes mentioned above are controlled by either the BIOS or the UEFI (depends on which one you have.) So if you could figure out a way to overwrite those then you could either just erase the BIOS/UEFI or change some fail safes, shut down the fans and wait for the CPU to melt. (probably erasing BIOS would be worse)

No clue how hard/ easy it would be to edit that though. Heard of some guys modding their BIOS but i also seem to recall that they needed some sort of tool to do that and requires physical access.
Like ande said it is very hardware specific as well.

[Architect]

Among the others mentioned in which the BIOS is the primary target, or the CPU fans, there was a Mac OSX battery exploit: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/hacker-macbook-battery-explode-overheat,13123.html

A hacker could hijack the firmware to render a lithium-ion battery useless so it no longer holds a charge – or even worse, turn off the temperature management to make it potentially explode

There was a paper (not sure if it was fake or not) a while ago from a hacker group that implied they could hack computers and turn them into bombs. This isn't really all that that far fetched considering you could create hardware malware that spreads via USB/disk etc. and then kills BIOS, heatsink fans, or anything that controls heat/power consumption.