Hacker’s Untimely Death Mourned at Las Vegas Black Hat Convention
Photo Credit: Isaac Brekken/APBarnaby Jack, the hackers’ hacker, was once again the toast of the Black Hat convention in Las Vegas.
He won an award. He drew packed crowds. His face adorned buttons and posters. His name was on everyone’s lips.
Except this time Jack was dead, the honours were posthumous and the gatherings were memorials. There were eulogies and questions: how did he die? What will happen to his work?
…The 35-year-old New Zealander was due to show how cyber criminals could remotely attack people with pacemakers and other implanted medical devices, but on July 25 was found dead at his home in San Francisco…
Friends said intellectual curiosity drove Jack to see if a villain could remotely hijack technology to steal, in the case of ATMs, or even kill, in the case of insulin pumps and pacemakers. He showed that a scene in which a terrorist kills a character in the TV series Homeland was not necessarily outlandish. “He had a flair for doing this that almost no one in our industry has,” said Chris Wysopol, a longtime friend and chief technical officer of Veracode. “Barnaby liked the excitement, the thrill of the hunt.”
Banks and medical equipment manufacturers shuddered when he probed their technology. “They always groaned. When someone outside your company does this it’s scary,” said Wysopol…
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