In Hacking Medical Devices, Bruce Schneier comments on this New York Times article, A Heart Device Is Found Vulnerable to Hacker Attacks. A team of computer security researches is reporting that they were able to hack into implanted heart defibrillators wirelessly. They were able to reprogram it to shut down and to deliver jolts of electricity that would potentially be fatal — if the device had been in a person.
These things are implanted in a patient (they are also pacemakers) and wirelessly send telemetry to doctors. The "device makers have begun designing them to connect to the Internet, which allows doctors to monitor patients from remote locations."
As Schneier explains "Of course, we all know how this happened. It's a story we've seen a zillion times before: the designers didn't think about security, so the design wasn't secure."
Dick Cheney has one of these devices implanted in his chest. Maybe that's why no one has seen him in a while. Ok he has been making appearances that no one cares about. Hmmmm.
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