What Dick Cheney's Heart Teaches Us About Security

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.eweek.com/blogs/security-watch/what-dick-cheneys-heart-teaches-us-about-security.html

By Sean Michael Kerner
eWEEK.com
2013-10-21

In an interesting interview on CBS' 60 Minutes this past weekend, former 
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney admitted that he was worried hackers could 
hack his heart. Cheney was implanted with a heart defibrillator device in 
2007 to fix a number of ailments.

Cheney's Cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, ordered that the heart 
defibrillator's wireless features be disabled for fear that a hacker could 
somehow get access and kill Cheney. The fear is one that was played out in 
a fictional sequence on the Showtime drama "Homeland" this year.

"It seemed to me to be a bad idea for the vice president to have a device 
that maybe somebody on a rope line or in the next hotel room or downstairs 
might be able to get into -- hack into," Reiner said during the 60 Minutes 
segment.

Cheney's doctor was a bit ahead of his time, perhaps, but absolutely 
correct in being cautious. At the Black Hat 2011 conference, a researcher 
demonstrated how an insulin pump could be hacked and there have been 
numerous other presentations on medical device flaws in the last few 
years.

[...]



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