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

[Bing Tsher E]

Except Rock Stars have significant portions of the mainstream public admiring them before they O.D.

Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[Pharmboy]

No, hackers are just like anyone else and this proves it. People overdose all the time, they just don't make the front page of Slashdot.

Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[Mr.CRC]

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. You cannot "know your dose" with illegal drugs because you: 1. don't know what drug it really is at all; 2. don't know the concentration or purity. The best way to reduce ODs would be to legalize everything, then all the info on how to dose and minimize adverse health consequences could be kept out in the open.

Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[Anonymous Coward]

Fear of pot makes you stupid.

Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[itsdapead]

Proof? No, you have a hypothesis and a single point of data.

If only he had a hypothesis (men in black kill hacker to shut him up*) and two points of data: (A) Hacker about to give a speech, (B) hacker dies from overdose - then it would be much more compelling.

(*despite knowing that "Hacker gives talk on hacking pacemakers" = page 5 just under the skateboarding duck whereas "Hacker dies mysteriously on eve of controversial speech" is at least worth a side column on page 1.)

Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[Sponge Bath]

Always know your dose.

Other words of wisdom from Ron White: "Never let a mormon set your buzz level."

Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[Anonymous Coward]

He combined heroin with Xanax and an antihistamine. That is a pretty reckless combination. Sure, it's possible that the heroin was uncharacteristically pure.

Nevertheless, if you combine three depressant drugs (two of them quite strong), you're always risking an overdose. You can't really blame this one on prohibition.

Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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

[Oligonicella]

I have known a number of druggies, some on various hard stuffs. No. They would still OD. People still huff, knowing full well it coats your lungs. People still sniff gasoline, knowing full well it destroys your brain. These are two completely legal substances. No. People would still be stupid. You can't bypass stupid with a label.

Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention we've had a recent kinda nasty VP that requires pacemakers and whom would have probably been a target if the info would have leaked and you have one more bullet point in the "this smells funny" column. Reminds me of that reporter whose family aid he had a phobia about blood and would pass smooth out when he saw a drop of the stuff supposedly slit his wrists to kill himself.

Frankly it should be so trivial to tell if he was a druggie, the stuff ends up in the hair, nails, hell with heavy users they practically sweat drugs so finding out shouldn't take any time at all...wanna bet nobody runs anymore tests? After all we have learned from Manning and Snowden the past couple of years frankly I trust the mob more than I trust my own government so call me paranoid but I'd like a second opinion please.

Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[Guido von Guido II]

You're missing the point. As you pointed out, legality and known purity is not going to prevent all overdoses, but it would prevent some.

If you're buying drugs on the street, it's difficult to tell exactly how pure. This means that by taking the same mass of a particular drug, you're not going to get precisely the same amount of active ingredient. If your latest dose is sufficiently purer than your typical dose, then you may overdose.

What complicates this is that many addicts will go off of their drug of choice for a period of time and lose their tolerance. When they start using again, their bodies can't handle as much but they try to use their old dose and overdose.

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:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[LoRdTAW]

I am surprised this got modded insightful. Nothing against the parent but knowing your dose wouldn't help in cases like this. It was an OD from a cocktail of heroin, cocaine, Diphenhydramine (aka Benadryl) and Alprazolam (aka Xanax). Even if they were legal, no sane doctor would ever advise taking all four together. This was nothing more than death from reckless drug use. You could legalize everything, provide safe usage guidelines and people would still die like this. Its the same as speeding, losing control of your car and dying in a car crash caused by your own recklessness. you knew the limit, you were taught to follow it but you ignored it.

Basically the worst thing you can do is mix this stuff together. They do it to have one drug counteract the other eg. coke is a stimulant and heroine is a depressant. The two are combined to get the extreme euphoria of heroin but having the coke combat the sedation (most heroin users shoot up and pass out). Those two used together is called a speedball and has killed quite a few famous people, and many more regular users.

Why he also chose to throw benadryl and Xanax on top of that deadly mix is beyond me.

Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[ColdWetDog]

While all of this is true to an extent, the bigger problem is mix and match. There is very little real data on the effects of mixing multiple classes of drugs other than to tell the user 'it's dangerous, don't do it'. Most ODs are from either naive users, as you point out, or users who get drunk (typically), then add a slurry of other drugs, then go somewhere dark to pass out and then just quit breathing.

Most ODs would be thwarted by having the presumptive victim in the same room as other people who have managed to keep enough of their brainstem function so as to remain breathing spontaneously. Calling 911 or just kicking the victim in the groin is pretty easy, even for the lay person.

(Channel to the OD scene in 'Pulp Fiction'... )

Re:Hackers are the new Rock Stars

[flyneye]

I've yet to see any proof that wasn't just heresay from those with a profit to protect.
Come, bring your evidence.
If you bring a researcher, bring his benefactor as well. You will see patterns form.
Marijuana is harmful to profits, THAT is the ONLY harm there EVER was from the use of marijuana.
Even smoking has produced no cancers. No deaths. Not even hangnails.

You mean it wasn't a conspiracy ?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Slashdot is really letting itself go, when posts describing the mundane reality take precedence over a good conspiracy story.

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

Re:You mean it wasn't a conspiracy ?

[mcgrew]

It's easy to get away with murdering a drug user. Even if the guy's a speed freak and he dies of a barbiturate overdose, it's automatically an accident.

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.

Bad things

[onyxruby]

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.

Re:Bad things

[mikeabbott420]

Legal drugs aren't made in jungles or unsanitary conditions regardless of any intoxicating property. This is actually one of the arguments for legalizing recreational drugs, e.g. people buying weed in Colorado are far less likely to buy weed that has been sprayed with toxic chemicals like pesticides.

Re:Bad things

[onyxruby]

The legalizing it trend is about far more than marijuana and it always has been. Don't fool yourself.

Re:Bad things

[Immerman]

Actually medications are very rarely banned - what usually happens is doctors just stick to prescribing the safer drugs unless they prove ineffective, in which case they switch to the riskier ones. You know, that whole "Do no harm" oath they take.

As for the recreational stuff - the point of legalization is not necessarily to voice approval, its an acknowledgement that prohibition doesn't actually work and never has, no matter how draconian the punishments (remember that story about a couple people in a garden and an apple? Or maybe the one about Al Capone?). And that most of the evils associated with the drug trade are due to it's illegal nature, not the drug itself. Since it can't be stopped we may as well legalize it so we can deprive the really horrible, violent people who control the black market of the massive revenue stream that provides most of their funding. Not to mention bringing production into a safer more regulated environment and stopping the militarization of the police force and the erosion of civil liberties. And of course improving the security of the borders - do you really thing a foreign terrorist would try to smuggle his dirty bomb through customs when he can just buy a ticket on a well-established drug run instead? Oh, and reducing human trafficking - slavery is more profitable when you can piggyback on established drug routes instead of having to do everything yourself.

Besides which, the only recreational drug currently getting any traction towards legalization in the US is marijuana, which is far safer than alcohol by any measure you care to name. And most of the really nasty synthetic stuff was explicitly created as a cheaper or legal alternative to something illegal. If you could buy medical grade cocaine at the corner store with only the usual commercial markup, how many people do you suppose would choose black-market heroin instead?

Re:Bad things

[Cyfun]

Illegal narcotics are made in garages and jungles in unregulated conditions BECAUSE they can't be made legally. One of the main reasons they cause so much harm to people is BECAUSE of these poor manufacturing conditions and how they're cut. We should legalize them simply to allow us to create and distribute them in a safer manner that we can regulate and monitor.

Besides, people die many times more from prescription drug abuse than illegal drug abuse.

And alien races likely avoid us because of or proclivity for violence over diplomacy, greed over innovation, and utter lack of common sense. If anything, legalizing narcotics and spending the money treating addicts instead of just tossing them in jail would make it MORE likely that aliens would see us as sensible motherfuckers and contact us.

So... let's legalize drugs so we can meet some hot green Orion women already!

Re:Bad things

[Fnord666]

Actually medications are very rarely banned - what usually happens is doctors just stick to prescribing the safer drugs unless they prove ineffective, in which case they switch to the riskier ones. You know, that whole "Do no harm" oath they take.

You must be seeing different doctors that I do. It seems like a lot of doctors these days prescribe whichever new drug the pharmaceutical rep is pushing this month. Even more so if the pharmaceutical company is providing a multi-day "informational" or "familiarization" conference that happens to be on a cruise ship in the Caribbean.

Re:Bad things

[Zynder]

The Prohibition trend is about far more than marijuana and it always has been. Don't fool yourself.

We see through your bullshit.

If James Bond had died this way

[TheloniousToady]

From the Top Secret coroner's report on 007's death:

Witnesses report that the decedent ingested a cocktail of drugs just prior to death. When they tried to revive him, he was shaken, but not stirred.

Re:CIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that they paid off his girlfriend to say he was a drug user.

This smells to high heaven like a conspiracy.

Don't do drugs, kids!

[Max Threshold]

If you do drugs, the CIA will definitely use an overdose to assassinate you.

Re:CIA

[citizenr]

Hacked into CIA? He worked under DoD Darpa contracts. Whole L0pht does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tPPD0MRX7I

"hackers" are now feds.

Re:CIA

[Cito]

The guy was a known hardcore junky, some of the live cam crap he posted on zoklet "totse replacement" was crazy, everyone told him he was gonna be a "Brandon Vedas" aka "Ripper" who od'd in irc and on webcam

Occam's Razor

[westlake]

It was heroin. Someone else could have injected it.

It was a drug cocktail.

Evidence of long-tern drug and alcohol abuse isn't likely to escape the notice of a competent pathologist.

The autopsy report has now been made available and says Mr Jack had shown "no visible or palpable evidence of trauma".
Instead, his physical symptoms indicated an accidental overdose of heroin, cocaine, and prescription drugs.
The report said Mr Jack's girlfriend had found him lying in bed unresponsive, with "multiple bottles of beer and champagne in the garbage can".

Elite Hacker Barnaby Jack 'overdosed on drugs'

Re:Drug prescriptions ...

[TheGratefulNet]

general practitioners are not super smart people. they had to be, once, to pass their exams, but they quickly forget most of their training and now just hawk the pharma products they were told to.

I once had a really bad medical condition that lasted for several months. I was on short-term disab due to this and I kept going to the doctor to find out what was wrong. their approach? try this antibiotic for a few weeks and come back. we'll see how it worked. if that didn't do it, we'll try this one. and then that one.

shit! I could have done that myself (if I could get access to those). is this 'training'? no! its a sequential list of trials with no analysis done at all. this is what passes for 'medical knowledge' in many cases, today.

I used to travel to the UK pretty regularly and once when I was sick there, I simply went to a dispensing chemist (like a pharmacy in the US, but they have much more ability to mix and prescribe drugs, removing the need for the 'search/try list' doctor visit). I was amazed (and the thing that he mixed up, literally, for me in that bottle did the trick). didn't have to go to a dr. and didn't have to waste time or money.

for simple things, I'd much rather just go to my pharmacist. they seem to know the drugs WAY better than doctors, for the most part. for surgery, sure, go to a dr. but for drugs, doctors rarely know what the hell they're doing. they know general guidelines but they are not chemists and most forgot all their bio/chem lessons and are 'mechanics', at best).