Hacker Dies Days Before He Was to Reveal How to Remotely Kill Pacemaker Patients [videos]

Barnaby Jack (Still from YouTube video/ViralNewsHD)

Another “convenient” death? At 36 years of age it’s unlikely it was from natural causes. Possible, but not likely. It will be interesting to hear what the coroner lists as the official cause of death.

If they can control drones, phones and automobiles remotely—and even ATMs as Jack illustrated a few years ago (see last video)—why would a wireless implant device be any different?

I’ve heard that the chips they want to implant in all of us will make it possible for them to “erase” us on demand if we are one of the few remaining after implementing their mass extinction eugenics agenda and we are a “problem”.

Kiwi Barnaby Jack may have become a “problem” to many manufacturers like Medtronic who supply these costly medical devices.

I wonder how many people now have pacemakers. Would a defibrillator also be at risk? Probably.

Was Jack a government asset gone rogue—meaning he decided to expose some other things he knew as postulated in the first video below or was currently investigating. Was he, like Michael Hastings, getting too close for comfort, too high risk?

The San Francisco Medical Examiner is already saying it may be months before the cause of death is released. Why, if no foul play is suspected? Or do they need time to cremate the remains as they did with Hastings so no foul play CAN be proven?

Or perhaps they need time to fudge his medical records with some deadly health condition he kept from his loved ones? Or perhaps they need to be sure they all get their stories straight so they don’t screw up as they’ve done before with myriad inconsistencies. These are all questions that go through my mind, but maybe I’m just a crazy conspiracy theorist…

If you don’t know Jack, have a look at this. He certainly seems healthy to me.

July 26, 2013

Barnaby Jack

Barnaby Michael Douglas Jack (November 22, 1977 – July 25, 2013

Security researcher Barnaby Jack has passed away in San Francisco, only days before a scheduled appearance at a Las Vegas hacker conference where he intended to show how an ordinary pacemaker could be compromised in order to kill a man.

Jack, who previously presented hacks involving ATMs and insulin pumps at the annual Black Hat conference in Vegas, was confirmed dead Friday morning by the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s office, Reuters reported. He passed away Thursday this week, but the office declined to offer any more details at this time.

Jack’s death came one week to the day before he was scheduled to detail one of his most recent exploits in a Black Hat talk called “Implantable Medical Devices: Hacking Humans.”

I was intrigued by the fact that these critical life devices communicate wirelessly. I decided to look at pacemakers and ICDs (implantable cardioverter defibrillators) to see if they communicated securely and if it would be possible for an attacker to remotely control these devices,” Jack told Vice last month.

Black Hat’s organizers will not be filling Jack’s spot at the event as a mark of respect for a legendary and irreplaceable” man. Security firm IOActive also tweeted their condolences in homage of their“beloved pirate.”

After around six months of research, Jack said he developed a way to hack one of those devices remotely and send it a high-voltage shock from upwards of 50 feet away.

If the devices can be accessed remotely, there’s always a potential for abuse,” he told Vice tech reporter William Alexander.

In a blog post earlier this year, Jack said he was influenced by a recent episode of the television program “Homeland,” in which a terrorist remotely hacked the pacemaker of the United States vice president.

Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann
Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann

In my professional opinion, the episode was not too far off the mark,” he wrote.

When Alexander asked Jack if a government official outfitted with a pacemaker would be vulnerable to assassination from a hacker, the researcher remarked, “I wouldn’t feel comfortable speculating about such a scenario.”

Although the threat of a malicious attack to anyone with an implantable device is slim, we want to mitigate these risks no matter how minor,” he wrote on his blog post. At the time, Jack said the vulnerability was being discussed with medical device manufacturers.

Over the past year, we’ve become increasingly aware of cyber security vulnerabilities in incidents that have been reported to us,” William Maisel, deputy director for science at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, told Reuters. “Hundreds of medical devices have been affected, involving dozens of manufacturers.”

At previous Black Hat talks, Jack detailed how he emulated a stunt found in the movie Terminator 2 that allowed him to remotely hack an automatic teller machine. In addition to being able to read credit card numbers and PINs inputted by another user, Jack also showed how a USB drive could be implanted in an ATM which would override the machine’s firmware and allow a hacker to take control.

In another presentation, Jack said he could hack insulin pumps to order the machines to deliver lethal doses to patients, in turn killing them.

We notified the manufacturer of the vulnerability and it will be fixed with the next insulin pump revision,” he told Vice.

Jack’s most recent employer, security firm IOActive, said in a statement, “Lost but never forgotten our beloved pirate, Barnaby Jack has passed. He was a master hacker and dear friend. Here’s to you Barnes!”

Black Hat is scheduled to begin Wednesday in Las Vegas, with a presentation by NSA Chief Gen. Keith Alexander. It will be immediately followed by the Def Con hacker conference, which will be taking place just down the road. Researchers at Def Con plan to demonstrate various high-profile hacks, including how modern cars can be compromised.

Source

Watch him hack an ATM. He could make them spew cash in a splashy way—like a one-armed bandit in a casino! Brilliant. It’s a good thing he warned ATM manufacturers about this breach before someone else shared the wealth.

 

Source Article from http://2012thebigpicture.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/hacker-dies-days-before-he-was-to-reveal-how-to-remotely-kill-pacemaker-patients-videos/

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