Elite hacker passed away

[John_Mann]

Elite hacker Barnaby Jack dies ahead of Black Hat event

An elite hacker who was due to demonstrate how heart implants could be hacked has died unexpectedly in San Francisco.

Barnaby Jack died on Thursday, the city's medical examiner's office told Reuters, but did not give more details.

He had been due to give a presentation into medical device vulnerabilities at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas taking place next week.

He had said one technique could kill a man from 30 feet (nine metres) away.

IOActive, the security firm at which Mr Jack was director of embedded devices, said it was preparing a statement.

In a tweet, the company said: "Lost but never forgotten our beloved pirate, Barnaby Jack has passed."

His sister Amberleigh Jack, who lives in New Zealand, told Reuters news agency he was 35.

Mr Jack became one of the most famous hackers on the planet after a 2010 demonstration in which he hacked a cashpoint, making it give out money. The technique was dubbed "Jackpotting".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23467411

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss_RWctTARU

 

[Jennywocky]

Sad. I'll be interested in knowing what the autopsy report says.

if this were a Michael Crichton novel, of course, his death would have been masterminded by one of the medical tech companies in order to cover up flaws in their equipment design... or by someone who wanted the company to be blamed and ruined.

 

[John_Mann]

A man who supposed can kill a person with heart implants in a range of 10 meters it's something to a lot of people be afraid of.

 

[Jennywocky]

A man who supposed can kill a person with heart implants in a range of 10 meters it's something to a lot of people be afraid of.

"Hey, excuse me -- can you slip this into your chest for a moment? Hey thanks! Now hold still!"

Anyway, it's something to worry about when someone walking near or through a hospital could create heart malfunctions or kill a number of patients or trigger an insulin dump into a diabetic, etc. And hospitals and medical companies are conservative. If your product has an exploitable hole that would result in the hospital or company going under because of numerous million/billion dollar lawsuits, then they will not buy or stock your product. Which means your company will go under.

Considering how much of these companies are worth, that's exactly why someone could feasibly see such info as a threat and why Crichton or someone else would have considered it a viable novel topic.

 

[TimeAsylums]

"Hey, excuse me -- can you slip this into your chest for a moment? Hey thanks! Now hold still!"

Anyway, it's something to worry about when someone walking near or through a hospital could create heart malfunctions or kill a number of patients or trigger an insulin dump into a diabetic, etc. And hospitals and medical companies are conservative. If your product has an exploitable hole that would result in the hospital or company going under because of numerous million/billion dollar lawsuits, then they will not buy or stock your product. Which means your company will go under.

Considering how much of these companies are worth, that's exactly why someone could feasibly see such info as a threat

Agreed. So much of a real danger here, I'm sure the world will be curious >_<

Crichton or someone else would have considered it a viable novel topic.

Agreed, if he hadn't passed away himself a bit ago :/ rip Crichton.
Congno & State of Fear <3

 

[Valentas]

Another reason to live healthy life and prevent a need of any intervention to your body. :d

 

[worm]

Perhaps it is a good thing that the world doesn't know about this new way of killing. It has the potential to be used by terrorists and insanses for a very devastating effect. Now heart implants would need to be updated constantly, like any normal software.

 

[TheScornedReflex]

I am disappointed that he didn't live to do the demonstration.

 

[Jennywocky]

Perhaps it is a good thing that the world doesn't know about this new way of killing. It has the potential to be used by terrorists and insanses for a very devastating effect. Now heart implants would need to be updated constantly, like any normal software.

Did you or anyone else see the news story about the hacker guys demonstrating how easy it is for them to control an automobile once they've hacked into it?

I guess the big issue is location. Do they actually have to be in the car to control it and/or need to force some kind of physical entry into the car; or can they hack into it from outside via WiFi? It's something to be concerned about for devices when Wireless becomes attached to them, I suppose -- as hacking into them is just like hacking into every other system.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygre...w-car-attacks-with-me-behind-the-wheel-video/

But Miller and Valasek’s work assumed physical access to the cars’ computers for a reason: Gaining wireless access to a car’s network is old news. A team of researchers at the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego, experimenting on a sedan from an unnamed company in 2010, found that they could wirelessly penetrate the same critical systems Miller and Valasek targeted using the car’s OnStar-like cellular connection, Bluetooth bugs, a rogue Android app that synched with the car’s network from the driver’s smartphone or even a malicious audio file on a CD in the car’s stereo system. “Academics have shown you can get remote code execution,” says Valasek, using hacker jargon for the ability to start running commands on a system. “We showed you can do a lot of crazy things once you’re inside.”

One of the UCSD professors involved in those earlier tests, Stefan Savage, claims that wireless hacks remain possible and affect the entire industry: Given that attacks on driving systems have yet to be spotted outside of a lab, manufacturers simply haven’t fully secured their software, he says. “The vulnerabilities that we found were the kind that existed on PCs in the early to mid-1990s, when computers were first getting on the Internet,” says Savage.

And the cars with more automated functions (like self-parking) probably allow even more functionality to hack into.