Ride the Lightning

Afraid of Hackers, Doctors Disable Wireless in Dick Cheney's Pacemaker

October 23, 2013

Sometimes it is good not to be in the public eye. Former Vice President Cheney has never shied from the limelight and, as Naked Security reported, his doctors have disabled his pacemaker's wireless capabilities to foil possible assassination attempts.

Interviewed on 60 Minutes by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Cheney indicated that he was aware of the hacking danger. While no medical device has been hacked in real life (as far as we know), the research clearly demonstrates the potential for hacking. A year ago, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (such a clever misnomer) took the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to task for ignoring the possibility that medical devices are vulnerable to malware, unauthorized access and denial of service attacks.

Researchers have demonstrated the potential for incidents resulting from intentional threats in insulin pumps and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators. The late Barnaby Jack succeeded in overriding an insulin pump's radio control and its vibrating alert safety feature, proving that you could dump a potentially lethal dose of insulin without the pump alerting the wearer.

The FBA has since told medical device makers and hospitals to strengthen security to prevent an intentional version of such hacking, unencrypted data transfer that can be manipulated or a host of other threat vectors.

Creepy, scary stuff.

http://twitter.com/sharonnelsonesq