Last year the news were flooded with reports of all kinds of big companies getting hacked, along with users being hit with things like ransom ware, the question is what’s next.
Sadly the answer could be in all the tech that’s been saving people’s lives lately, in a recent episode on the TV show limitless a number of people with a prosthetic arms started to lose control over their artificial limbs and did stuff ranging from damaging paintings to crashing their vehicles, one of them even tried to use it to their advantage to commit murder.
That’s the sci-fi version of what could happen and although it’s just a show theoretically it is something that could actually happen if these limbs were accessible, not protected well enough along with gained knowledge in the hacking community.
Stepping away from TV, what about those people that use something like a drug infusion pump? According to this article they could very well be the next target for the ransom ware we’ve been exposed to for a while now. If hacked how much would they pay to keep their lives, the usual $200 to $10,000 that they’ve been getting just for personal information would pale in comparison to someone’s life.
This is why health industries are coming under fire and a pretty good reason for technology manufactures to start concentrating on security which is something that’s been lacking for many years now. Yes where there is a will, there is a way and hackers will always be trying to take advantage of that but with the knowledge we have today companies should be constantly developing newer security measures especially on devices like these.
The next question is why allow a connection to these devices from the internet period? Not everything needs to be on the internet and I would think that these devices would be among the top of the list, along with something like a Nuclear power station, how much of our lives are we willing to sacrifice for convenience?