IT GIVES new meaning to the term "heart attack". Last week researchers led by William Maisel at Harvard University used a commercially available radio transmitter to hijack the software on a device that acts as both a heart pacemaker and defibrillator.
The device was not implanted in anyone, but the experiment raises the prospect of hackers being able to disrupt a person's heartbeat or stealthily administer damaging shocks.
Is the threat of a hacker-instigated heart attack imminent? "The chances of someone being harmed by malicious reprogramming of their device is remote," says Maisel. However, implanted drug pumps and neurostimulators, which deliver electrical pulses to the brain, could be more vulnerable to such attacks in future as they increasingly have wireless capabilities built in.
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