Computers have been open to hacking attacks for years now, but most people generally think of the PC sitting on their desk, a supercomputer tucked away in a bank vault, or those in the Pentagon being hacked. Nobody even imagined that medical devices, such as pacemakers, meant to regulate a heartbeat, could also be hacked. As cruel as it may sound, computer security researchers in the US found out that, if hackers decide to turn nasty, there are potential threats to millions of patients.

Not every pacemaker can be hacked though, as researchers have referred to the Medtronic Maximo DR, a combination pacemaker and defibrillator with wireless capabilities, as being potentially dangerous. A group of researchers from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Washington found that it was possible to hack this device by placing it within two inches of some very expensive ($30,000 worth of) lab equipment and reprogramming it to either shut down or to deliver fatal jolts of electricity.

 

Plus, after testing the pacemaker themselves, the researchers said they had 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.

 

The researchers said they chose Medtronic’s Maximo because they considered the device typical of many implants with wireless communications features. Radios have been used in implants for decades to enable doctors to test them during office visits. But device makers have begun designing them to connect to the Internet, which allows doctors to monitor patients from remote locations.

 

The researchers said the test results suggested that too little attention was being paid to security in the growing number of medical implants being equipped with communications capabilities, but that there is no current risk to the hundreds of thousands of people using such devices. At least, not for now.

 

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