Horrifying though it may sound, the world’s first online murder could happen before we move into the year 2015. The European policing agency has sounded an alarm with a warning about governments around the world being unprepared for what cyber criminals can do by exploiting Internet technologies to kill their victims.
Europol’s dire predictions aren’t entirely impossible seeing as Barnaby Jack, managed to hack into medical devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps in order to gain control over how they behave. Unfortunately, this legendary programmer and computer security expert passed away a week before he was to present a demo on hacking heart implants at the Black Hat 2013 conference.
In this age of connected devices, injury and possible deaths caused by attacks on critical safety equipment are worrying issues. Dick Cheney who previously served as US Vice President, disclosed the wireless function to have been disabled on his implanted defibrillator due to similar fears. The problem is that police forensic techniques still have to catch up with the times.
A post on The Independent says that Europol thinks the first murder caused by a hacked Internet-connected device could happen in 2014, even though there are no proven cases of attempted manslaughter via exploitation of such technology so far. The ‘Internet of Everything’ means hospital health systems, vehicles, smart homes, cars, traffic control rooms and more are susceptible to ‘hack attacks.’
Also see: 8 out of 10 Internet consumers have privacy concerns about wearable devices
It’s not like governments are doing nothing about this looming danger though. US health officials have ordered hospitals to upgrade security after discovering issues with about 300 medical devices following reports about malware having slowed down monitors employed for high-risk pregnancies. Quite unnervingly, there’s a blooming quasi-underground market for buying and and selling vulnerabilities.
If you think ‘death by Internet’ is farther away than expected, it has already happened due to online extortion and blackmail which have led to suicide in the past.