{"id":37488,"date":"2020-10-05T13:56:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T13:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/packetstormsecurity.com\/news\/view\/31635\/Could-Someone-Hack-My-Microchip-Implant.html"},"modified":"2020-10-05T13:56:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-05T13:56:00","slug":"could-someone-hack-my-microchip-implant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/could-someone-hack-my-microchip-implant\/","title":{"rendered":"Could Someone Hack My Microchip Implant?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Illustration: Benjamin Currie\/Gizmodo<\/figcaption><\/div>\n

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Giz Asks<\/a><\/span><\/a><\/span>Giz Asks<\/a><\/span>In this Gizmodo series, we ask questions about everything and get answers from a variety of experts.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

These are, absolutely, very bleak times, but in a sense we should cherish them: we\u2019re living through maybe the last stretch of history before employers start mandating microchips en masse. You\u2019re going to miss living in fear of contracting a deadly virus, once HR brings out the scalpel\u2014and then you\u2019re going to miss the day you had a productivity tracker roughly sewn into your forearm, because of course that\u2019s just the beginning. If I\u2019ve learned anything from the news, it\u2019s that rival foreign superpowers are obsessed with hacking things. And you can bet they\u2019ll set to messing around with your body-chip, when the time comes. At the very least, they\u2019ll try\u2014there\u2019s always the chance they might fail. For this week\u2019s Giz Asks<\/a><\/span>, we reached out to a number of experts to find out whether someone\u2014the nerd down the street, the Russian government, whoever\u2014could actually hack your microchip.<\/p>\n

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Matthew Green<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/h4>\n

Associate Professor, Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, whose research focuses on techniques for privacy-enhanced information storage, among other things<\/em><\/p>\n

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Anything can be hacked. In theory, medical device software is supposed to be held to higher quality standards, but to date this mostly applies to safety and reliability concerns, rather than security. I\u2019ve witnessed recent examples where researchers were able to take control over life-saving devices, like implantable cardiac defibrillator devices, and send commands that could potentially stop a patient\u2019s heart. The security protecting these devices was much less sophisticated than what\u2019s protecting your phone. <\/p>\n

Assuming your microchip implant has a wireless connection (a pretty good assumption), there\u2019s every chance that it will have some vulnerability that can be exploited\u2014either to issue commands that the device is designed to process, or else to take over the device and cause it to operate in ways it was not designed to.<\/p>\n

The real question in my mind is whether anyone will actually want<\/em> to hack your implant. The big difference between a theoretical hack and one that gets exploited in the real world is usually money. Concretely: can someone find a way to turn a profit by hacking you? Whether that\u2019s possible here depends very much on what that microchip is going to do for you, and how valuable it is to you for everything to keep working. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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