14 DAY TRIAL // In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” former United States Vice President Dick Cheney has revealed that his doctor disabled the wireless function of his implanted defibrillator to protect him against terrorist cyberattacks.
Cheney suffered his first heart attack at age 37. In 2007, when his defibrillator had to be replaced, his doctor ordered the manufacturer to disable the device’s wireless feature to prevent a potential terrorist cyberattack.
“It seemed to me a bad idea for the vice president of the United States to have a device that maybe somebody on a rope line or someone in the next hotel room or down stairs might be able to get into, hack into,” Cheney’s doctor said on 60 Minutes.
Some time later, a similar scenario was described in the TV series Homeland. When the show aired, Cheney said he found the scenario as being credible, based on his own experience.
Of course, IT security researchers have been warning for years that cyberattacks on wireless medical devices are a real threat. Even the US-CERT and the FDA have issued warnings on this topic.