Researcher claims feasibility of writing lethal wireless pacemaker viruses

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Researcher claims feasibility of writing lethal wireless pacemaker viruses

In a presentation at the BreakPoint security conference in Melbourne, IOActive researcher Barnaby Jack described an attack on pacemakers that could, he says, deliver lethal shocks to their owners. Jack claims that an unspecified pacemaker vendor’s devices have a secret wireless back-door that can be activated by knowledgeable attackers from up to 30 feet away, and that this facility can be used to kill the victim right away, or to reprogram pacemakers to broadcast malicious firmware updates as their owners move around, which cause them to also spread the firmware, until they fail at a later time. Darren Pauli from Secure Business Intelligence quotes Jack as saying,

“The worst case scenario that I can think of, which is 100 percent possible with these devices, would be to load a compromised firmware update onto a programmer and … the compromised programmer would then infect the next pacemaker or ICD and then each would subsequently infect all others in range,” Jack said.

He was developing a graphical adminstration platform dubbed “Electric Feel” which could scan for medical devices in range and with no more than a right-click, could enable shocking of the device, and reading and writing firmware and patient data.

“With a max voltage of 830 volts, it’s not hard to see why this is a fairly deadly feature. Not only could you induce cardiac arrest, but you could continually recharge the device and deliver shocks on loop,” he said.

Manufacturers of implanted devices have been resistant to calls to publish their sourcecode and to allow device owners to inspect and modify that code, citing security concerns should latent vulnerabilities be exposed, and put implantees at risk. But as Jack’s presentation demonstrates, vulnerabilities can be discovered without publication — and if they are discovered and not disclosed, they may never be patched (or may not be patched until coming to light in some kind of horrific attack). In other words, secrecy helps bad guys, but keeps good guys and innocent bystanders in the dark.

Hacked terminals capable of causing pacemaker deaths

(Thanks, Jon!)

(Image: Atlas Pacemaker, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from travisgoodspeed’s photostream)

Genetically-modified mouse to sniff out landmines

Genetically-modified mouse to sniff out landmines: NewImage
The MouSensor is a lab mouse genetically-engineered to sniff out land mines. Mice have already been trained to find explosives by scent but according to Hunter College biologist Charlotte D’Hulst, the MouSensor is ultra sensitive to the odor of TNT. From The Guardian:

Given its extreme sensitivity to TNT, the mouse would probably have some sort of seizure when it sniffed explosives, said D’Hulst, because so many neurons in its olfactory bulb would be firing at once. And that seizure might be detectable by some device implanted into the mouse.
“We are thinking along the lines of implanting a chip under the skin of these animals that would wirelessly report back to a computer when the animal’s behaviour is changing upon being triggered by a TNT landmine,” said D’Hulst. Once the location of a landmine had been identified, a bomb-disposal expert could go in and neutralise it in the normal way. The mouse itself would be safe from the landmine, since it would be too small to trigger an explosion.

“GM mouse created to detect landmines“


On New Years Eve 2011 I was in Geelong at a restaurant, 800km…

[It’s kind of a rough time to be a teenager. -egg]

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On New Years Eve 2011 I was in Geelong at a restaurant, 800km…

On New Years Eve 2011 I was in Geelong at a restaurant, 800km from my home in Adelaide. This year I happened to be away from my children, who were staying elsewhere in Adelaide while I was interstate. My home was supposedly vacant. However I knew it was very hot in Adelaide that day (40C) and I wondered if this would affect my power consumption, for example an increased duty cycle on the fridge. I am just that sort of power-geek.

So I checked my Fluksometer via my 3G android phone. I was surprised to see 1000W being used since 1pm – about what my Air-con uses. I also noticed that around 7pm the power jumped by a few 100W, just like the lights had gone on, or perhaps the TV.

Looked like some one was in my home. On New Years Eve. Hmmmmmm.

Busting Teenage Partying with a Fluksometer « Rowetel)

Parody of anti-gay pamphlets offers detailed, behind-the-scenes view of how liars misuse real citations

[Awesomeness. -egg]

Parody of anti-gay pamphlets offers detailed, behind-the-scenes view of how liars misuse real citations:

The Box Turtle Bulletin has put together a great parody of anti-gay, fear-mongering pamphlets. Entitled, “The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing the Myths”, it includes important revelations about the heterosexuals and their plans for your children and our country. Here’s a quick excerpt from a section that documents some of the depraved behaviors that heterosexuals are known to engage in:

… unsafe behavior is often compounded by drug use, which is an integral part of the heterosexual lifestyle. College students who engage in heterosexuality are 30% more likely to use marijuana than gay students, and they are nearly 40% more likely to use other drugs. (71) Among Redbook readers, 90% of heterosexual women admitted to initiating sex while under the influence of alcohol, and 30% had sex after smoking marijuana. For women under twenty, marijuana use before sex skyrocketed to 63%, with 45% of them using it often. (72)

Those numbered citations are important. In fact, this slim booklet contains more than 100. And it’s not just part of the parody. Instead, author Jim Burroway uses these ostensibly unbiased sources of information as a way showing how people can use real information to corroborate a lie. Follow up on his citations at the end of The Heterosexual Agenda, and you’ll find a breakdown of how, exactly, he contorted the cited source to fit his own goals.

For instance, consider these facts about how heterosexuals are always getting stoned and drunk before engaging in their filthy heterosexual encounters. Here’s what Burroway had to say about it:

This study was a based on the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS), a randomsampled survey. But notice the phrase “those who engage in heterosexuality.” This is a very deliberate choice of words, and an alarm should go off whenever you see it. When anti-gay writers talk about people “who engaging in homosexuality”, they often include bisexuals, who may have been previously (or currently) heterosexually married, or they may have been essentially heterosexual but experimented once or twice with homosexuality at some point in their lives. All of this depends on the definitions used in the particular study. Many anti-gay writers exploit these inconsistent definitions, sometimes including bisexuals in their statistics for homosexuality, while other times including them with heterosexuals. This choice is typically done on a statistic-by-statistic basis, driven by which set of numbers will portray gays and lesbians in the worst light. For this study, the actual breakdown of marijuana use is: heterosexual, 19% (of 8816); homosexual, 14.6% (of 225); and bisexual, 33.3% (of 348). For other drug use: heterosexual, 7.1%; homosexual, 9.9%; and bisexual. 18%. As you can see, when you work from a paradigm that divides everyone along heterosexual and homosexual lines, you can make a huge difference based on how you deal with bisexuals.

Changing the context, removing the context, and generally cherry-picking the data that shows what you want it to show is a great way to make spurious claims look more legitimate. It’s a tactic that’s used in homophobic hate tracts, but it’s not ONLY used in those places.

The value of Burroway’s work goes far beyond the topic of sexuality and GBLTQ rights. If you want a better idea of how “authoritative” sources lie, this is a great place to start. It’ll get you looking for the context and asking the right questions. In general, it’s a great primer in learning how to be skeptical.

Read the full pamphlet, including Burroway’s follow-up, “How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract in 15 Easy Steps.”


Image: Rally to Restore Sanity – [Citation Needed], a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from jabella’s photostream


“Newly released malware PlaceRaider sounds like science…

“Newly released malware PlaceRaider sounds like science…:

“Newly released malware PlaceRaider sounds like science fiction: It’s Android malware designed to build 3-D models of users’ apartments for burglars and assassins. But PlaceRaider—developed by a team at Indiana University—is very real. The new malware was built as an academic exercise, and it exposes security flaws that government agencies would love to use. More importantly, it also exposes unintended mobile functionality that large companies like Google could easily monetize.”
New Android Malware Is A Burglar’s Best Friend | Fast Company (via Dan W)
(“more importantly”?)

“The “love” necklace displays an entire year…

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“The “love” necklace displays an entire year…

“The “love” necklace displays an entire year of tweets by a person. The lengths of the beads indicate the number of tweets in a month. The shorter lengths indicate how often she used the word “love” that month. I can do the same for any word. Along the sides of every other bead you’ll see a single laser-etched tweet for that period. They’re visible if you hold up the beads to the light, and are partially public, partially private. I like to think of them as little reminders, memories, almost like a 21st Century locket.”

The Data Necklace | Indiegogo