Heartbeat patterns could keep wireless implants secure

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 months 2 weeks (technology.newscientist.com)

If future medical implants are to communicate safely, they need to be hacker resistant – a person's pulse could provide the key.

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How to stop a new type of heart attack

sea-maid submitted, created time 3 months 22 hours (technology.newscientist.com)

PACEMAKERS are supposed to protect people from heart attacks. But to do that they have to provide digital as well as biological security.
Earlier this year, a team led by William Maisel at Harvard Medical School demonstrated how a commercial radio transmitter could be used to modify wireless communications from a pacemaker (New Scientist, 22 March, p 23). Doctors normally use these signals to monitor and adjust the implanted device, but a malicious hacker could reprogram the pacemaker to give its wearer damaging shocks, or run down its batteries

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