What if someone could hack your pacemaker? While the scenario seems like bizarre science fiction, Europol, the European Union’s chief criminal intelligence agency, is warning that in an era of ever-increasing interconnectedness (what they refer to as the “Internet of Everything”), the threat of online murder is on the rise.
RT.com reported that some 230 members of law enforcement, academic and private businesses met in The Hague last week at the 2015 Europol-INTERPOL cybercrime conference, where they sought to examine both contemporary trends in crime and new techniques and technologies being adopted by criminals.
At the conference, Europol released a threat assessment showing that as the world becomes technologically “smarter” with the advent of smart cars, homes and other devices which can be remotely accessed, it also becomes more vulnerable to hacking attacks.
“The IoE represents a whole new attack vector that we believe criminals will already be looking for ways to exploit,” according to the Europol threat assessment.
“The IoE is inevitable. We must expect a rapidly growing number of devices to be rendered ‘smart’ and thence to become interconnected,” it continued. “Unfortunately, we feel that it is equally inevitable that many of these devices will leave vulnerabilities via which access to networks can be gained by criminals.”
The Europol threat assessment echoes elements of a 2013 report by American security firm IID, which predicted that the first murder by a “hacked Internet-connected device” would occur by the end of 2014.
Some conspiracy theorists point to the death of Rolling Stone and Buzzfeed reporter Michael Hastings in a car crash in June 2013. Hastings had been a vocal critic of U.S. surveillance and had warned his colleagues of an upcoming FBI investigation. Now, an industry expert claims that the details of the crash are consistent with a car cyber attack.
Others fear that medical devices such as pacemakers could be hacked and compromised in a form of anonymous assassination. The idea seems surreal, like something out of the Matrix.
However, the technology is real. In 2008, computer security researchers successfully accessed a wireless combination defibrillator and pacemaker. This idea of hacking a pacemaker also influenced both the plot of the TV drama “Homeland” and the medical care given to Vice President Dick Cheney, whose doctors chose to disable the remote control function of his pacemaker in 2007.
Since 2008, the FDA has encouraged medical device makers to strengthen vulnerabilities which could allow a device to be hacked. Thus far, the idea rests more in the realm of hypotheticals and conspiracy theories, but, as the conference shows, the risk is out there.
