Hacker Barnaby Jack demonstrated a closer-to-life, dangerous application of his trade recently.

Hacking, be it into bank cash machines or websites including social networking sites, is common as hackers find more ways to bypass the upgraded security systems. The results vary from inconvenience to confusion to loss of money among other serious implications. But none has been ones which cause real-life pain. Jack’s demonstration shows otherwise.

Jack, a researcher with McAfee Inc, shot into fame after hacking into a cash machine and making it spit money on stage during the Black Hat Computer Security Conference in 2010. He is currently working on finding security soft spots in wireless medical devices.  And the 34-year-old, with his latest stunt, showed how prone these life-saving devices are to hacking and outside manipulation.  With a radio device, Jack showed how a common insulin pump — which is implanted inside the body of a diabetic patient to deliver prescribed doses of the chemical into the bloodstream — can be hacked to deliver doses higher than required, triggering fatal consequences.

He used an antenna and a see-through mannequin fitted with a plastic bag of clear liquid (in place of pancreas) attached inside for his demonstration. With the push of a button on his laptop, the antenna located and hacked into the security system controlling the program of the insulin pump attached to the mannequin’s hip. His software then instructed the pump to push its contents into the “pancreas” through a small tube.

This small demonstration has thrown open a huge debate about the safety of Insulin pumps, pacemakers and other medical devices which use wireless communications.

To make matters worse these devices have to be recalled for updates and cannot have security updates automatically like in mobiles or computers. So security fixes are out of the question. Jack’s findings will be presented at the RSA security conference in San Francisco.

Debates on the security issues of medical devices have been there before too. In 2008, a study found that a pacemaker-defibrillator from a popular manufacturer can be remotely reprogrammed to deliver fatal shocks.

Last year, Idaho-based hacker Jay Radcliffe, a diabetic patient himself, showed how hackers could tinker into the bestselling pump.

Radcliffe’s effort resulted in a huge uproar and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) launched an investigation to look into whether the medical device industry’s cyber security systems are good enough.

Jack’s efforts take hack-attack a step further. He can use his program to scan a public space and find vulnerable pumps made by Medtronic Inc, a Minneapolis-based firm. He can then force the pumps to dispense fatal insulin doses.

Dangerous indeed!

Jack’s program is something that anyone can replicate and sell online and the results would be catastrophic.

Medtronic has already taken steps to cover the loop holes in its devices. The company has hired security teams from Argonne National Laboratory, Symantec Corp. and Wurldtech Security Technologies Inc. to inspect its products and is coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security to make remedial measures.

But that will take years to implement and by that time things could make a turn for the nasty.

Jack is working though – to find means to forcibly get into the device’s electronics and upgrade its security.

The post Medical Devices Can Be Easily Hacked With Lethal Consequences, Shows Hacker appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

To be noted on a few days earlier pod2g had confirmed on his blog ” jailbreak is only a matter of days away”.

Much progress has been made on the iPad 2 Jailbreak as well. Only a day after pod2g demoed the iPhone 4S jailbreak, he posted an image showing an iPad 2 jailbroken and running Cydia on iOS 5.0.1. Since both iPhone 4S and iPad 2 use A5 chip, the jailbreak will work on both devices once it is released into the wild.

 @planetbeing also tweeted a photo of an iPad 2 that has been jailbroken. He confirmed that the popular Jailbreak tweak “IntelliScreenX” that he helped write works on the iPad 2 right out of the Box.

The iPad 2 and iPhone 4S jailbreak is Almost here! As of right now jailbreaking the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 has only been successful on the iOS 5.0.1.

If you are looking forward to jailbreaking your iPhone 4S or iPad 2, if you haven’t already we suggest that you upgrade your iDevice to iOS 5.0.1 as fast as possible via iTunes. Apple may release an iOS update to counter the jailbreak. If your device happens to be not the iOS 5.0.1 and Apple releases a new version you will not be able to jailbreak your iPhone 4S or iPad 2. You can also back up the SHSH blobs of your iDevice in order to make sure you can downgrade your iDevice to iOS 5.0.1 in future by using TinyUmbrella.

Download the iOS 5.0 –  [iPhone 4S]: iPhone4,1 5.0_9A334_Restore.ipsw

The post How To Prepare For iPhone 4S And iPad 2 Jailbreak appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

CyFi revealed her findings at the Defcon conference in Las Vegas as part of a competition to find young computer security experts. She found that you could manually advance the clock in certain games, allowing virtual crops to mature more quickly, for example. If you’re tired of waiting around in FarmVille, you may not need to wait anymore.

Is this cheating? Perhaps, but I did the same thing in Animal Crossing both on the GameCube and the Nintendo DS. I just couldn’t wait around for things to happen, so I jumped the clock and pretended it was the next day. CyFi felt the same: “It was hard to make progress in the game, because it took so long for things to grow. So I thought, ‘Why don’t I just change the time?’” she told CNET.

The post 10-year-old girl hacks smartphone, discovers security flaw appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Instead, the hack attack was targeting about 2,000 Sony Ericsson mobile communications users in Canada, pilfering the personal information of these cell phone owners. Similarly, phishing spam emails were sent out from Sony’s online Thai services.

I’m sure that other companies suffer through some hacking attacks too and it’s just unfortunate for Sony that its problems have become so widespread and so well-known. This really tarnishes their good name that has stood for quality for so many years.

The post Will It Ever Stop? Sony Hacked Again appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Not surprisingly, we’re once again turning our attention over to the Chronic Dev Team to find the newest version of Greenpois0n for your jailbreaking pleasure. The good news is that this is an untethered solution, meaning that you can reboot your iDevice without having to plug it into a computer.

For now, the Greenpois0n jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1 is only for Macs, but we’re fully expecting the Windows and Linux equivalents to be pushed out soon enough. You might not even want to jailbreak anymore, though, since the Verizon iPhone already allows for hotspot sharing (and presumably the GSM version will follow… we hope). These jailbreaks can sometimes have odd effects on those with carrier unlocked iPhones too.

So, as is the case with all these jailbreaks, proceed at your own risk, caution, and discretion. It is called pois0n for a reason.

[Chronic Dev via Wired]

The post Greenp0ison’s iOS 4.2.1 untethered jailbreak is live appeared first on Mobile Magazine.