Information Security News: Anti-Terrorism Cloaking Device...For Pacemakers?

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/688451/AntiTerrorism_Cloaking_DeviceFor_Pacemakers.html

By Frank Meyer 
G4tv.com
August 20, 2008

So what do you think could be the latest high-tech development in 
terrorist tactics?

Satellite assassins? Stealth bullets? Mind bombs?

Nope.

How about using the radio signals emitting from pacemakers to shut them 
down or deliver potentially lethal electric shocks to millions of heart 
patients?

Whaaaaaat?

It’s true. Well, potentially true.

Doctors are using wireless pacemakers more and more these days to 
monitor the regulation of patients' heartbeats, and can even adjust the 
settings remotely. But earlier this year a team of US scientists using a 
radio signal were able to simulate interference with the devices and 
claimed that, in theory, hijackers could do the same. So scientists 
started working on a cloaking device that stops computer hackers from 
hijacking pacemakers' radio signals

Now a computer scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle 
named Dr. Tamara Denning has developed a cloaking device that will 
resist any instructions that come from anyone other than the doctor. 
Though it has yet to be tested, the devise could eventually be worn like 
a wristwatch… which is quite dope.

[...]

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