November 2011
Barnaby Jack showcases how medical devices are vulnerable to embedded device hacking
At this year’s Hacker Halted conference in Miami, I was in the audience while my friend Barnaby Jack conducted a live hacking demonstration using RF 900 MHz RF and an insulin pump. During the first part of his presentation, he went into great detail describing how he reversed the embedded device firmware and discovered the vulnerabilities that allowed him to send START/STOP/SUSPEND/DUMP ALL INSULIN commands to the pump without any knowledge of the device serial number or PIN.
The presentation and demonstration was a moment of awakening for many in the audiance that were not aware of how prevalent embedded devices are in our society, or how they can be utilized in ways the manufacturer did not intend.