The leftards will be taking crash courses. This takes super weaponry to a whole new level. Dr. Paul J. Werbos, "sounds plausible. It reminds me a little of the Terminator III scenario, which (bad though the movie was) is worth thinking about". Ya think? Here is some of their previous work.
A Heart Device Is Found Vulnerable to Hacker Attacks NY Times hat tip Lifeboat
To the long list of objects vulnerable to attack by computer hackers, add the human heart.
The threat seems largely theoretical. But a team of computer security researchers plans to report Wednesday that it had been able to gain wireless access to a combination heart defibrillator and pacemaker.
They were able to reprogram it to shut down and to deliver jolts of electricity that would potentially be fatal — if the device had been in a person. In this case, the researcher were hacking into a device in a laboratory.
The researchers said they had also been able to glean personal patient data by eavesdropping on signals from the tiny wireless radio that Medtronic, the device’s maker, had embedded in the implant as a way to let doctors monitor and adjust it without surgery.
OT but related: Will the bionic man have virus protection?
Gadi Evron, a prominent Israeli network security expert, has some questions about a future when we let software into our bionic, cybernetic bodies.
Say we really do start modifying ourself, he asked a late-night crowd here at the Chaos Computer Camp. Presumably, that means a bit of hardware, a bit of software. And as any security consultant knows, every piece of software ever written by an actual human is riddled with flaws and bugs, which translate all too easily into security flaws.
Suddenly a whole slew of problems familiar to the network security world appear. If someone finds a bug in a bionic body part, what are the ethical issues? Should it be reported widely? Just to the company producing the component? Hidden, or sold for profit?
And what about patches? Will people line up at schools for heart-implant fixes, like for today's flu shot? Will viruses distribute false patches, and infect body parts? Or an apocalyptic scenario: What if our cybernetic tools synchronized themselves with Outlook.
With wireless connections, viruses could even spread, well, through the air. What kind of intellectual property issues could arise? Pirates, crackers, ransom-artists, virus-writers, all focused on the body instead of the laptop.
