Gradually we are all becoming more and more dependent on machines, we will be able to live longer with an increased quality of life due to machines integrated into our body. However, our dependence on technology grows faster than our ability to secure it, and a security failure of a medical device can have fatal consequences. This talk is about Marie's personal experience with being the host of a vulnerable medical implant, and how this has forced her to become a human part of the "Internet-of-Things".
Marie's life depends on the functioning of a medical device, a pacemaker that generates each and every beat of her heart. This computer inside of her may fail due to hardware and software issues, due to misconfigurations or network-connectivity.
Yes, you read that correctly. The pacemaker has a wireless interface for remote monitoring forcing the patient to become a human part of the Internet-of-Things. As a security-professional Marie is worried about her heart's attack surface. How can she trust the machine inside her body, when it is running on proprietary code and there is no transparency? This is why she went shopping on eBay to acquire medical devices that can communicate with her pacemaker, and started a hacking project together with her friend Éireann.
This talk will be focused on the problem that we have these life critical devices with vulnerabilities that can't easily be patched without performing surgery on patients, Marie's personal experience with being the host of such a device, and how the hacker community can proceed to work with the vendors to secure the devices.