Are defibrillators vulnerable to hacking and even reprogramming? Well, a research says the technology for monitoring defibrillators can be hacked and even reprogrammed, devastating to a life saving device.

More than a lakh patient in the US has implanted newer defibrillators, which send that data to the doctor at his hospital through the monitor at the bedside of the patient.

The research says that any one could intercept the transmissions from the monitor, as the transmissions are not encrypted. The hacker could b able to retrieve data such as the patient’s birth date, Social security number, Medical ID number and even more.

With the technology spreading to different sphere like pacemakers and hearing implants, they predict increasing risk of a patient’s data being hacked.

Specialized software and a small antenna could be used by a hacker to intercept transmissions from a defibrillator, says Peper Long, Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman. But she said the chances of reprogramming a defibrillator were so remote.

Stating that the findings did not have any clinical significance, Heart Rhythm Society president Bruce Lindsay said defibrillator transmissions were not designed to withstand terrorist attacks. Pointing out that hacking the system was quite difficult, he said it could not be done by one down in the streets.

Medtronic Inc, leading defibrillator producers, said deliberate manipulating of the system was low. Company spokesman Rob Clark said in the future defibrillators with more security would come up. Other leading market dealers — Boston Scientific and St. Jude – were of the same opinion that illegal manipulation of the device was so remote.

The research was conducted by Dr William Maisel, a Harvard-affiliated director of the Medical Device Safety Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, which included computer scientists from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the University of Washington.

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