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Hacker Barnaby Jack Died of Drug Overdose

Posted by Soulskill on from the rest-in-peace dept.

DrDevil writes "Barnaby Jack, the computer security expert who died mysteriously a few days before he was due to give a presentation on hacking pacemakers at last year's Black Hat, died of a drug overdose. The coroner initially withheld the report, which led to much speculation given the timing of his death. Mr. Jack appears to have taken a cocktail of drugs (PDF) and was found dead by his girlfriend. His girlfriend stated that he had used drugs regularly."

6 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Hackers are the new Rock Stars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    and this just proves it.

    1. Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If this was an OD due to illegal drugs, then it's likely that it wouldn't have occurred if the drugs were simply legal.

      What a bunch of crackpot nonsense.

      I guess Micheal Jackson would have been alive if just propofol would be legal??

      Prescriptions now biggest cause of fatal drug overdoses

      http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-09-30-drug-overdose_N.htm

      Simply the reason that something is NOT illegal, does not make it safe. How many people die of alcohol overdose each year? Too lazy to find out? Let me help you.

      http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-1/110-120.htm

      he annual average number of deaths for which alcohol poisoning was listed as an underlying cause was 317, with an age-adjusted death rate of 0.11 per 100,000 population. An average of 1,076 additional deaths included alcohol poisoning as a contributing cause, bringing the total number of deaths with any mention of alcohol poisoning to 1,393 per year (0.49 per 100,000 population). Males accounted for more than 80 percent of these deaths.

      If only alcohol was a legal drug, right?? Right?

      There are many reasons for legalizing illegal drugs (mostly to do with 3rd party risk mitigation), but overdoses have nothing to do with it.

    2. Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars by marcello_dl · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Another data point is that the investigation should not rely on the GF alone, to determine if it's a case of drug addiction. Sampling hair is not very difficult in many cases. Else I have for you a bulletproof way to kill your BF: poison him and declare he was doing drugs.

      Another data point is collectible: what would cost pacemaker producers to fix the trouble once an exploit is possible and relatives of patients who die (no need for attack, they can die of malfunctions, of simply worrying about it) start to sue.

      Another data point is in the making: whether his death will make the "hacking pacemakers" presentation impossible or too generic to be useful.

      As the other poster said, you also have to wonder why experimenting with heavy dosage of drugs is a good idea when you have a presentation that will make you world famous is just a few days away.

      --
      ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
    3. Re: Hackers are the new Rock Stars by Sean · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Barnaby would routinely party until 5am then deliver the first talk in the morning. And deliver the talk well. His research was good, but then again so was the research of others who weren't nearly as much fun. Conference organizers aren't robots.

      His hard partying ways were well known in the security community. Reading all of this conspiratorial talk reminds me how foolish we can be when we talk about people we've never even met.

      Does anyone seriously expect a bunch of other well known hackers to admit in public that they routinely binged on drink and hard drugs with Barnaby? Merely to put to rest wild speculation by some randoms who didn't even know him and will likely continue to believe whatever they want to believe?

  2. Bad things by onyxruby · · Score: 2, Interesting

    These medications are bad for you, people die once in while, were going to sue and try to ban them. This seems to get just about everyone's approval. However these other medications that were made in a garage or jungle or other unsanitary conditions and routinely kill untold numbers of people but just happen to get people high. Let's legalize them!

    If an alien species were to look and observe these types of things they would mark "do not contact" after determining the human race was crazy as hell.

  3. Re:You mean it wasn't a conspiracy ? by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Or could it be that the coroner was bought by the peacemaker manufacturing lobby to give that statement?

    It was heroin. Someone else could have injected it.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."