PACEMAKERS are supposed to protect people from heart attacks. But to do that they have to provide digital as well as biological security.
Earlier this year, a team led by William Maisel at Harvard Medical School demonstrated how a commercial radio transmitter could be used to modify wireless communications from a pacemaker (New Scientist, 22 March, p 23). Doctors normally use these signals to monitor and adjust the implanted device, but a malicious hacker could reprogram the pacemaker to give its wearer damaging shocks, or run down its batteries.
Such irresponsible attacks might seem inconceivable, but Tamara Denning, a…
