Hackers Will Be Tempted by Cyborg Vulnerabilities | Big Think

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Medical devices like pacemakers and insulin pumps will save many lives, but they also represent an opportunity to computer hackers who would use the Internet to cause havoc. Former futurist-in-residence at the FBI, Marc Goodman says it is easy to take for granted how connected we've already become to the Internet. Most American adults keep their phones within arm's reach all day, and keep their devices on their nightstand while they sleep — and forget about actually remembering people's phone numbers. That is a job we have outsourced to machines.

In this sense, says Goodman, we are already cyborgs. But digital devices connected to the Internet will continue to move inside our bodies, just as pacemakers and insulin pumps have. In his interview, Goodman discusses cases of computer hackers taking advantage of these devices' connectivity to show how vulnerable we could soon become to their potentially destructive wishes. In one case, a hacker demonstrated he could release several weeks of insulin into a diabetic's body, certain to cause a diabetic coma and death. In another, hackers induced epileptic seizures by hacking the Epilepsy Foundation's webpage.

At bottom is the Internet of Things, a increasingly connected web of devices that will make our lives simpler and more efficient, but this network will also make us vulnerable in ways that are difficult to detect, let alone prevent. Goodman's message is not that we need to constantly fear a new world of better health and convenience, but that we need to be aware of technology's pitfalls in life.

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MARC GOODMAN:

Marc Goodman is focused on the disruptive impact of advancing technologies on security, business, and international affairs. He has spent a career in law enforcement and technology. He was appointed futurist-in-residence with the FBI, worked as a senior adviser to Interpol, and served as a street police officer. As the founder of the Future Crimes Institute and the Chair for Policy, Law, and Ethics at Silicon Valley's Singularity University, he continues to investigate the intriguing and often terrifying intersection of science and security, uncovering nascent threats and combating the darker sides of technology.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Marc Goodman: A subset of the Internet of things is a whole category of medical devices. We have wearables, things like the Fitbit. We have embeddables. We have implantables. Things like diabetic pumps for example. Internet enabled defibrillators implanted in our chests. So implantable defibrillators, pacemakers and the like. We have brain-computer interface. And now we’re even creating pills that are Internet enabled so that you can swallow a pill and it goes into your stomach. The pill’s computer is powered by your stomach acid, and it can control the release of medicine: how much medicine is released over a time. So we are slowly but surely becoming cyborgs. I know it sounds like science fiction but if you think about it, most people are walking around with their cell phone in their pocket or in their hand 24/7. When people go to sleep they put it on their nightstand. So slowly but surely computers are replacing our own cognitive abilities to an extent. When I was younger I used to know by memory the phone numbers of all of my friends because there were no cell phones with all these little address books.

Today we just automatically dump that data into our cell phone and just call it up on demand. The same with our address book and the like. So the cell phone, though currently outside of our body, means that’s kind of the first step towards us theoretically becoming cyborgs. The next step of course will be implanting these devices into us. There are people, several researchers including one out of Cambridge in the UK that have implanted RFID chips underneath their skin for years. These people are called body modders and they will go out there and use those RFID chips to open up the security door in their office place, to pay for goods and services. So you can actually do that now. So there’s a whole movement of people who are quite interested.

It’s sort of underground these days. If you – it’s sort of the next generation of piercing. There’s a whole community around piercing and tattooing. And the next generation of that is to implant these computer devices in our skin, under our skin that give us new forms of senses. For example magnets. A whole movement of people put magnets under their skin and the.....

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