Poor Dick Cheney. Worried about having his heart hacked by "terrorists"
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he once feared that terrorists could use the electrical device that had been implanted near his heart to kill him and had his doctor disable its wireless function. Cheney says that he and his doctor, cardiologist Jonathan Reiner, turned off the device’s wireless function in case a terrorist tried to send his heart a fatal shock.Years later, Cheney watched an episode of the Showtime series “Homeland” in which such a scenario was part of the plot.
“I found it credible,” Cheney tells “60 Minutes” in a segment to be aired Sunday. “I know from the experience we had, and the necessity for adjusting my own device, that it was an accurate portrayal of what was possible.”Mr Dick (heartless,blood soaked hands) Cheney had his wireless function turned off years before the TV series Homeland portrayed just such a scenario. Suggests to me that this technology is real and should be a legitimate concern for people who have these implants.Grunky Funk- Deadeye Dick: Ode to Dick CheneyFinally gives me the opportunity to use this older news story that I had bookmarked previouslyBarnaby Jack dies a week before hacking convention
His genius was finding bugs in the tiny computers embedded in equipment, such as medical devices and cash machines. He often received standing ovations at conferences for his creativity and showmanship while his research forced equipment makers to fix bugs in their software.
Jack had planned to demonstrate his techniques to hack into pacemakers and implanted defibrillators at the Black Hat hackers convention in Las Vegas next Thursday. He told Reuters last week that he could kill a man from 30 feet away by attacking an implanted heart device.
Two years ago, Jack turned his attention to medical devices, while working on a team at McAfee that engineered methods for attacking insulin pumps. Their research prompted medical device maker Medtronic Inc to revamp the way it designs its products.
The U.S. government also noticed Jack's work.
"The work that Barnaby Jack and others have done to highlight some of these vulnerabilities has contributed importantly to progress in the field," said William Maisel, deputy director for science at the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Devices and Radiological Health.Jack's passion for hacking sometimes got him into trouble.
In 2010, he connected his laptop to a gold bullion dispensing machine at a casino in Abu Dhabi, according to fellow hacker Tiffany Strauchs Rad. She said Jack had permission from a hotel manager to hack the machine but security intervened.It turned out the hotel did not actually own the gold machine and the American Embassy had to be called in to help resolve the misunderstanding, Rad said.
"He would hack everything he touched," she said.
He would hack everything he touched. And then, Barnaby Jack dies, mysteriously????