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First Internet-Connected Pacemaker Goes Live
The Register is reporting that a New York woman has become the first person to have her pacemaker wirelessly connected to the internet for full-time monitoring. "The device contains a radio transmitter which connects to receiving equipment in New Yorker Carol Kasyjanski's home, using a very low-power signal around 400MHz, to report on the condition of her heart. Any problems are instantly reported to the doctor, and regular checkups can be done by remotely interrogating the home-based equipment — the pacemaker itself doesn't have an IP address, fun as that would be."
I wonder what a DDoS would do to it ...
Otherwise that lady is going to be in for quite the surprise when the pacemaker starts looking at youporn.
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Does it run Linux?
If the patent is rapidly losing consciousness
I wonder if that was intentional or not?
Now that Slashdot knows about it, it's only a matter of time before someone starts trying to hack these things. Countdown: Someone here installs Linux and runs a NES emulator on his own pacemaker in 3....2....
Would you want one with an IP address?
Not me, thank you.
On a side note, the pacemaker owner was recomended not to play multimedia content from youtube in his equipment so the battery lasts longer.
ping pacemaker
4 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 3609ms
meaning she is gone...
Why not just tap it into Twitter and utilize an existing system that's stable, easily accessible, and highly availabile? Not to mention you could keep your friends in the loop!
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
...then the next step is to see what a little overclocking would do to it...
That's assuming that someone sets up a scheduler to actually do these checkups. When my Dad has his pacemaker put in, he was supposed to go back to the hospital every few months to have the data the device was collecting downloaded and the battery checked. He had it for at least a year or two and it was never checked. Someone at the hospital forgot to enter it into a database. He had a checkup with his cardiologist during that time too and the doctor never asked about it.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
This is by no means the first "wirelessly-monitored" pacemaker. Pacemakers and ICDs have been linked to home monitoring equipment for several years, and that equipment routinely communicates with a central monitoring station (usually via a modem).
Now, if the pacemaker itself was doing the communicating directly (say over any Wifi or cellular network) that would be pretty amazing. But they point out that the pacemaker doesn't have an IP address, and it's only communicating with equipment in the patient's home. That sounds a lot like existing technology, except perhaps that the final link (home monitoring device -> monitoring station) is being performed via IP rather than a phone line. That's nice, but certainly not very exciting. And why does it require a whole new pacemaker to make this upgrade?
Clearly there's something to this article that I'm not seeing...
Recipient of said device breathes a sigh of relief when he discovers his heart won't be slashdotted.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
It doesn't have a receiver anyway. It's just a radio transmitter.
Denial of Systolic attack?
Thousands of 4channers suddenly stop what they were doing and in unison spit out, 'WHAT just got connected to the Internet?' as smiles spreads across their faces. ... maybe this isn't such a good idea...
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As someone fitted with a pacemaker of late, having means to often update the doc with performance data would be nice - if not downright life-saving.
With current technology, I have to go in for my "tuneup" every six months. It does involve a wireless interface, and there is an impressive amount of data dumped. A great many parameters can be changed with ease by a trained technician. When we determined that my natural resting heartrate was under 60bpm, reprogramming that to a minimum of 50bpm was trivial.
Transmitting ongoing data to the doc would be convenient, making it easy to email "hey, something funny happened today, please look into it" without having to wait until a scheduled appointment involving a not-always-available technician. Being able to transmit critical event as they occur is also very desirable - duh; my Medical Alert necklace may direct medics to call my cardiologist, who would be much more effective if he already had incident data.
Of course the real problem is remote control. Informing the doc of ongoing/critical data is one thing; allowing access to make remote updates is a different issue. Making the unit such that remote changes are impossible is, of course, possible. However, if ANY change will be made to such a critical device, then it should be done IN A DOCTOR'S OFFICE. One of my diagnostic routines is dropping my heart rate to 40bpm - harmless if done right, lethal if screwed up.
Of course the real concern to most /. readers is the LOLFAIL headline. "Hey, watch out for a DDOS on your pacemaker! Ha ha ha!" Nothing wins a lot of reads like a headline making some technical advancement sound really dumb. Funny how so many readers of a high-tech news source treat high-tech advancements like Luddites.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
serving as a timing belt.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Article indicates the pacemaker doesn't have an IP address, and only connects via 402-405 MHz radio link.
However, it's nearly inevitable that a later version of it and/or those of another pacemaker manufacturer will have its own IP.
Those with access to a large bot net could easily scan for pacemaker software and then target all or, more likely, a specific person(s) to remotely sabotage their pacemaker, possibly resulting in death...
Most killers won't go to such extremes, since there are numerous easier, less traceable ways of killing. But for people in prison, remote killing has its appeal ... in particular, to target judges and prosecutors, who, due to age / stress along with access to top quality medical care, often have pacemakers.
To digress somewhat, there are already numerous horror stories of people's on-line medical records getting mixed up / corrupted due to identity theives who seek care under someone elses name - and to make matters worse, ID victims generally do NOT have the right to see that extraneous data nor have it removed. So I'm highly skeptical of the security of on-line medical devices when even on-line medical records aren't as secure as they should be.
Ron
.... Aaargghh
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
... I think the server crashed, just dead links.
Doesn't matter just try out some of the 2^32 minus reserved addresses
all /.ers Christian Name starting with an "A" take the 0.5*2^30 upper addresses and ...
Thank good they haven't postet the IP on /.
I suppose you don't even need a computer network of brainless bots to DDOS a computer,
slashdot + us the faster than light clicking slashdot-crauts would fullfill the task, twice as good as any botnet can do,
btw. "Police: Man blamed child porn on cat"
haha next time he can blame his hacked pacemaker for doing so, it will also be very complicated to confiscate this evidence.
and here it comes the DomainName for the Pacemaker
http://pacemaker.chicagohope.md/
I think this is great.
It brings me to my own situation: I recently got a CPAP machine with a smartcard for data storage. Unfortunately the card reader is about 130 dollars online and it requires a proprietary software. If my MD wants to see the data he needs for me to remove the card and send it in.
Wouldn't it be great to have these kinds of home devices just "phone it in"? Real data that my MD can look over at his discretion as well as having a copy of it available to me for my own edification. It could be set up to red flag certain data that, because it could be detected as it happens, could prevent minor issues from becoming major issues. This is the kind of technology that is cheap to employ, automated systems could look for abnormalities and could lead to saving lives as well as curbing the cost of health care by making sure that small issues don't become major issues.
More and more people are doing home monitoring of medical conditions without being able to make sense of all the data. This is a great resource and one I can agree to using stimulus money for to take to the next level.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
sysadmin dad: son, your grandmother is getting old and she wont be around much longer. you should cherish the times you have with her
son: how do you know?
sysadmin dad: i caught her throwing warnings to syslog when i was checking logwatches for the toilet and the fridge today. plus her cacti trend for ping time and load looks horrible.
son: will grandma go to heaven?
sysadmin dad: depends, I didnt an asset tag on her so chances are the property disposal authorization wont go through and she'll just sit on the shipping receiving dock forever.
son: so shes going to be a ghost??
sysadmin dad: worse, people dont leave empties on you when your a ghost.
Good people go to bed earlier.
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