[nycbug-talk] interesting read (old pacemaker thread)

[Mark Saad]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 9:46 AM, Isaac Levy <ike at blackskyresearch.net> wrote:
> On Aug 29, 2011, at 9:31 AM, Chris Snyder wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 9:08 AM, Isaac Levy <ike at blackskyresearch.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> "Earlier this month, Jay Radcliffe, a computer security professional who is also diabetic, showed how an attacker could remotely control insulin pumps to deliver too much or too little insulin to the individual wearing the device."
>>>
>>> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/08/medical-device-security/
>>>
>>>
>>> Rocket-
>>> .ike
>>>
>>
>> Wow. That really pisses me off.
>
> Indeed.
>
>>
>> As in, everyone responsible for that product should be publicly
>> humiliated and prevented from ever working on medical devices again.
>> And how did it get licensed for use?
>
> Not sure if this is a pleasing response, but:
> "I wasn't scared, but I was up there looking around, I realised that I was sitting on a rocket with six thousand components, every one built by the low bidder."
> - Alan Shepard, First American to go to Space
>
> Rocket-
> .ike
>
>
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My wife who is a diabetic heard about this and first said "why would
he do that , now nothing will get approved by the FDA" . However she
was looking into how she could listen to her wireless glucose monitor
to have a desktop application that would show here count on the
computer she was working at.  My take on this is that the FDA should
publish a RFC for wireless device communications and design a nice
strict protocol for communications . The big issue I see here is each
dumb pharma company wants to copyright their product to make the most
money on their work. If they do a crap job no one will know they keep
all of their work closed and private. With the network they use open
and well designed and freely licensable  , big pharma can concentrate
on the nuts and bolts , the the over all quality of the mechanical
parts in the devices, and the software.

--
Mark Saad | mark.saad at ymail.com