Hacking a pacemaker

In the last few days I have read a couple of pieces which quote the William Gibson dictum "the future has already arrived, it’s just not distributed evenly". Confirmation that we are indeed living in a science-fiction story arrived today in the shape of a message on the Full Disclosure list: hacking a pacemaker. Security researcher Gadi Evron cites a report in the NYT.

" The threat seems largely theoretical. But a team of computer security researchers plans to report Wednesday that it had been able to gain wireless access to a combination heart defibrillator and pacemaker.

They were able to reprogram it to shut down and to deliver jolts of electricity that would potentially be fatal . if the device had been in a person. In this case, the researcher were hacking into a device in a laboratory. "

What a great way to assassinate somebody....