Cheney's defibrillator was modified to prevent hacking
By Dana Ford, CNN
updated 9:51 AM EDT, Thu October 24, 2013
(CNN) -- Cautious doctors replacing former Vice President Dick Cheney's heart defibrillator in 2007 modified it so it couldn't be hacked by terrorists who might try to kill him, Cheney told CNN's Sanjay Gupta in an interview that aired Sunday night on CBS' "60 Minutes."

"It seemed to me to be a bad idea for the vice president of the United States to have a device that maybe somebody ... might be able to get into, hack into," Reiner said. Turning to Cheney, the cardiologist added: "I worried that someone could kill you."

So, when Cheney needed his implanted defibrillator replaced in 2007, Reiner ordered the manufacturer to disable the wireless feature, thus preventing anyone from sending a signal to the device and shocking the vice president into cardiac arrest. http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/20/us/dick-cheney-gupta-interview/

Famed hacker Barnaby Jack dies a week before hacking convention
By Jim Finkle
BOSTON | Fri Jul 26, 2013 7:13pm EDT
(Reuters) - Barnaby Jack, a celebrated computer hacker who forced bank ATMs to spit out cash and sparked safety improvements in medical devices, died in San Francisco, a week before he was due to make a high-profile presentation at a hacking conference.

The New Zealand-born Jack, 35, was found dead on Thursday evening by "a loved one" at an apartment in San Francisco's Nob Hill neighborhood, according to a police spokesman. He would not say what caused Jack's death but said police had ruled out foul play.

Jack was one of the world's most prominent "white hat" hackers - those who use their technical skills to find security holes before criminals can exploit them.

Jack had planned to demonstrate his techniques to hack into pacemakers and implanted defibrillators at the Black Hat hackers convention in Las Vegas next Thursday. He told Reuters last week that he could kill a man from 30 feet away by attacking an implanted heart device. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/26/us-hacker-death-idUSBRE96P0K120130726