Hacker Barnaby Jack Died of Drug Overdose

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."

Comments

Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[Anonymous Coward]

and this just proves it.

Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[marcello_dl]

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.

Re: Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[Sean]

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?

Re:You mean it wasn't a conspiracy ?

[phantomfive]

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.