Intellectual Property Law

WiFi Pacemaker Hack Leads to Real Life Zombie Armies?

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

Proving that your front door, car fob, web browser and iPhone are vulnerable to remote attacks. Nothing too surprising there..

Proving that you can remotely hack someone's implanted pacemakers or defibrillator and even shock them to death? That's a hack too far, even for THREAT LEVEL.

Researchers released a report Wednesday showing it is possible to eavesdrop on implanted pacemakers and defribilators that use wireless technology to aid doctors in troubleshooting or tuning the devices.

And it's got to be freaking out the Secret Service, cause how do you throw yourself in front of a wireless signal aimed straight at the heart of Dick Cheney? Does this mean the BlueTooth sniper rifle now actually could be deadly? Will Dick Cheney have to travel around in a Faraday cage for the rest of his term in office?

We talked about this possibility last August, riffing on a talk from security researcher Gadi Evron, who was wondering how the bionic man of the future will deal with patching buggy code.

John Borland, guest blogging here, asked:

And what about patches? Will people line up at schools for heart-implant fixes, like for today's flu shot? Will viruses distribute false patches, and infect body parts? Or an apocalyptic scenario: What if our cybernetic tools synchronized themselves with Outlook.

New devices are being designed to connect to the internet wirelessly. Not worry, according to the device makers, since one major defibrillator company says it uses "proprietary techniques" to defend their implants, according to the Times.

Implant makers are seriously talking about proprietary techniques?

THREAT LEVEL looks forward to the day that a fellow train commuter sidejacks my pacemaker and turns me into a walking zombie botnet humanoid.

Hat Tip: Christopher Soghoian who spotted the pacemaker talk first and Gadi Evron for pointing THREAT LEVEL to its own online memory bank.

Photo: Jason Granfield

Full post as published by Threat Level on March 12, 2008 (boomark / email).