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Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Health Hackable Pacemakers: Maybe Not the Best Idea

Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 3:26 PM

PopSci says that if you have a pacemaker, hackers could now kill you.

Pacemakers could be infiltrated to deliver deadly shocks, according to a security expert. It wouldn’t be simple, but it offers the very James Bond-like possibility of anonymous digital assassination.

Hackers could also acquire personal information from pacemakers. Or they could just become mass-murderers with a few keystrokes:

“The worst case scenario that I can think of, which is 100 percent possible with these devices, would be to load a compromised firmware update onto a programmer and … the compromised programmer would then infect the next pacemaker or [defibrillator] and then each would subsequently infect all others in range,” he reportedly said.

I don't really know that anyone would have the motivation to murder a bunch of people via their pacemakers, but it's certainly a design flaw. Also: This scenario will be featured in a CSI-style TV show in a matter of months.

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Comments (4) RSS

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Watch out, DICK Cheney.

Posted by oh, THAT on October 17, 2012 at 4:10 PM

Wasn't this already a plot point on NCIS, last season?

Posted by Should I wear a faraday cage coat? on October 17, 2012 at 4:34 PM

Let me guess, MS licensed some ancient product like WinCE for these applications and it got ossified into place?

Posted by rob!

on October 17, 2012 at 4:41 PM

I think you're confusing theoretical vulnerability to web-based scripting attacks with medical devices that use the Internet (or Internet2 in some cases) to send status updates.

Just because the OS is not patched for a specific vulnerability does not mean that vulnerability is active and actionable.

Now, look at all those pretty apps on your cell phone. How many of those have hackable code?

Posted by Will in Seattle