Black Hat is just made for speculation, but a noted industry figure raised an interesting hacking possibility - e-murder.

Sleuth was chatting to David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro, about the overall security situation and he raised an interesting point. The last time we got together, at CES, he had to pop into hospital for a check-up.

"It was very interesting, they logged into my medical records, got the medicine routine and dose limits and then gave me what I needed," he said.

"But then I got to thinking about hacking. This system runs on Windows and the possibility that my dosage levels could be altered struck me. Could we be seeing e-murder by hacking such accounts in the future?".

This was a fascinating idea. After all, doctors and nurses are just like the rest of us, they take what the computer tells them as gospel. So long as the instructions given aren't too outlandish ("Administer one ounce of morphine") then the possibilities for medical problems is immense. A sobering thought as the country considers revamping its healthcare. 

28 Jul 2010