Official News page 6

REAL LIFE NEWS: HACKERS CAN ATTACK HEART MONITORS

by Hazed

Now this really is a security threat: American researchers have shown how it's possible for hackers to use a wireless attack to turn off individuals' heart monitors.

Across the world, many thousands of people have implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) installed: monitors that help their hearts to beat regularly. Their function is to speed up a heartbeat that's too slow, or to deliver an electric shock to the heart if it's beating too quickly, to slow it down again. ICDs possess a radio so hospital doctors can reprogram them without having to open up the patient's chest - but the radio signals are not encrypted.

This means somebody with a PC, an antenna and some radio hardware could hack the signal.

The Medical Device Security Center, which is backed by the Harvard Medical School among others, demonstrated the hack on an ICD that was not actually implanted in a patient. They showed that a hacker could "render the ICD incapable of responding to dangerous cardiac events. A malicious person could also make the ICD deliver a shock that could induce ventricular fibrillation, a potentially lethal arrhythmia."

Youch!

The Security Center says manufacturers of ICDs could prevent this threat by implementing several measures, including using cryptography.

Frankly, I think it should be standard for anything using wireless signals to be encrypted, especially when they are attached to something so critical. Hacking isn't usually a matter of life and death, but it could have fatal consequences in this case!

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