Murder by Internet
January 4, 2013
(Credit: iStockphoto)
New cyberthreats that will emerge in 2014 include the use of Internet-connected devices to carry out physical crimes, including murders, and cybercriminals leveraging mobile-device Near Field Communications (NFC) to wreak havoc with banking and e-commerce, predicts IID (Internet Identity, a provider of technology and services that help organizations secure their Internet presence,
With nearly every device, from healthcare to transportation, being controlled or communicated with in some way via the Internet, IID predicts that criminals will leverage this to carry out murders.
Examples include a pacemaker that can be tuned remotely, an Internet-connected car that can have its control systems altered, or an IV drip that can be shut off with a click of a mouse.
“With so many devices being Internet connected, it makes murdering people remotely relatively simple, at least from a technical perspective. That’s horrifying,” said IID president and CTO Rod Rasmussen. “Killings can be carried out with a significantly lower chance of getting caught, much less convicted, and if human history shows us anything, if you can find a new way to kill, it will be eventually be used.”
NFC dangers
By 2014, Juniper Research predicts, almost 300 million (one in five) smartphones worldwide will be NFC-enabled, and Global NFC transactions will total almost $50 billion. NFC is a set of smartphone standards that enables everything from payments to unlocking of hotel room doors to automatic peer-to-peer information exchange between two devices placed closely together. IID predicts that while the underlying technology in NFC is secure, almost all of the applications that will be written to interface with the technology will be riddled with security holes, and massive losses will ensue.
“The amount of banking and point of sale e-commerce apps that are being developed utilizing NFC is astronomical,” said IID Vice President of Threat Intelligence Paul Ferguson. “This is a gold mine for cybercriminals and we have already seen evidence that they are working to leverage these apps to siphon money.”
Other cybersecurity trends IID predicts for 2014 include:
- A large increase of government-sanctioned malware targeting other government institutions around the globe, with nation states openly engaging in acts of cyber-espionage and sabotage
- At least one successful penetration of a major infrastructure component like a power grid that results in billions of dollars in damage
- An exploit of a significant military assault system like drones that result in real-world consequences
Intelligence sharing network
However, IID predicts a strong response in the form of an intelligence sharing network that will alert participating companies, government institutions, and more about the latest cybercrime attacks.
Currently, government agencies lack clear guidance about the rules of engagement for sharing, and enterprises are worried about the potential liabilities created by intelligence sharing. IID expects that Congress will enact new cybersecurity legislation that provides safe harbor protections enabling enterprises and government institutions to share intelligence without such fears in the coming months.
To read about the latest Internet security trends, see IID’s quarterly eCrime Trend Reports.
Comments (15)
by Bri
Although I don’t want to downplay the possibilities that are being created by tech, in general I think tech is make it harder to get away with murder. Crime is another story. Part of the opportunistic scavenger mentality that has been a huge part in mammalian evolution
by Mike
The first hackers were teenagers with too much time on their hands. Some were just curious and wanted to go peeping into protected areas, others were malicious and caused havoc on purpose. Some were just clumsy and destroyed data and accounts unintentionally in their snooping escapades. We can expect that there will be plenty who are curious enough to get into this, and do what kids do. And then there are the professional hackers, out to exploit it for monetary or political purposes. And many others. So yes, if it’s possible, many will do it, and people will get hurt. Remember all the systems that we poured so much effort into for Y2K, because we thought a simple date problem would bring the country to its knees? The power grid, air traffic control systems, hospital equipment, banking systems, etc… Any place there might be a vulnerability, somebody is out there looking for it.
by JC
I’d rather be killed by a manipulated pacemaker than a drive by shooting. At least in the first case my family could go after the pacemaker maker and perhaps get something for their liability in leaving the product open to hacks. Product liability may force companies to secure their products. Good reason to buy from a big brand name. Pre-emptive regulation and high security requirements based on theories of risk could keep inventions high priced or even never released. Is that what we want? My bike did not have every (current) safety feature when I had it as a kid. I got some injuries, but I had a bike and that mobility changed my life for the much better.
by MinorityMandate
Cyber security is not an issue that the government is very interested in engaging with, aside from protecting itself and major corporations. In fact, these folks have a vested interest in seeing that once they are protected, everyone else is not (so they can track you or sell something to you).
What regulations government does make are increasingly belated and can be expected to lag technology more as the pace of innovation speeds up. That leaves private enterprise to protect the remainder of the cyber community. That they are not up to the task is readily apparent.
The types of crimes listed here would probably be perpetrated by insiders who have some knowledge of how the system works. Nurses, auto mechanics, and Wikileaks or religious kinds of people who want to make a statement, personal or ideological, come to mind.
by Gabriel
Still not as crazy as all that — the examples given, like the pacemaker, the IV drip, the car, an internet-connected car…..I still don’t see these as genuine fears. I feel their would have to be alot of enabling factors (the savvy-ness of a criminal and their equipment, who they are specifically targeting who must have enough exploits to take advantage of…) in order for someone to pull something off…
I can see important of protection from cyber-threats increasing overtime, but right now, it still feels too small, relatively speaking, to make a tremendous fuss. Some can say that’s why this is the perfect time to start implementing defenses, but then you run the risk of overblowing things out of proportion and infringing on people.
You have to make a really convincing case that cyber-threats are as bad as all that right now….obviously it’s not wise to wait until an incident happens before reacting, but I’m not sure the threat is as big as all that (right now, anyway).
by Eric Balingit
The whole idea of heading off disaster involves correcting paradigms as well as correcting errors. New technology / expanding technology must be adopted at the same time it is being fleshed out, so vulnerabilities occur at both ends – faulty design (errors) and improper implementation (paradigm). More over weak design and weak implementation are interchangeable with paradigmatic design principles i.e. capitalistic quick and dirties and deadline models and general bazaar markets for apps. Good design is what it is, quick and dirty is ubiquitous and paradigm shift is posteminent to disaster. Wake up! Granted, technology is complex, but the whole spectrum of product / consumer responsibility is the central melting point. Make well, buy well, market noise go to (well you know…) or bust. That, I believe is the large part of the story anyway.
by eldras
What a tremendous article!
Haptics would enable that of course, not to mention escaping from the screen by information exchange with the environment, infiltrating your personal robot and running amok with your coin collection.
Scaled down, money transaction on the net were also met with concern but everyone uses them now, so I expect haptics will have massive security (great paid jobs: yum yum!) embedded.
A.I.’s will check what is possible and sensor what is LIKELY to be harmful.
Stuffing you into the washing machine wouldn’t be good PR for an ISP.
ONE IDSSUE:
The Law of Accelerating Returns states Moors Law applies to technologies and science generally, not just transistors on a chip, and that exponential itself has an exponential trend in it (All easy to confirm).
As haptics come in late 2015 (?) robots will also come. Homw assemblers with 3D print internet connections for program downloads will also come (we can do clumsy ones now) and a profits driven mobile A.I. tech will also be here, miniaturizing supercomputing and doing more than just retrieval data but true understanding (pattern, prediction, hierarchy ontologies): al here now but on big systems.
Chips will be here that are presently prototyping like bio-inspired neural, chemical and light technologies.
In 2017 biotechnology will hit like a tsunami, obliterating the disease shoreline and going inland to drown many illnesses.
It will be followed by aging being halted, medical bills being slashed, health dramatically improving in one shot treatments, and the rejuvenation treatments that are reprogrammed mitochondria and an age on nanotech.
As supercomputers and reverse engineering the brain come in with quantum computer efficiencies in 2022, true post human self-improving artificial intelligences will emerge globally and solve unsolvables, especially in then past the quantum limits.
Then the Singularity will be here before the 2030, maybe as early as 2027 by osmosis, or if an AGI succeeds then at that point – which could be anytime including right now.
Then its resurrection of dead, miniaturization beyond what our science knows to exist, universe hopping and construction. Paradise Engineering, Multivac control and management of human affairs as we merge with what comes out of the computer screen.
The obvious place to be is Google!
.
by The Man
This is a wonderfully optimistic comment. Out of curiosity, how much do you think medicine and technology has advanced this decade? That is, compare January 2013 to January 2010.
by Noahfreak
Discoveries have advanced considerably. Implementation, however, has been thwarted by our current system. It’s kind of like the problem of creating incredibly advanced computer hardware without the software available to take advantage of it.
by eldras
I haven’t surveyed it Man,
My won experience is that information has shot thru to the GP and METHODS used today were not being used in 2010.
A friend had here cancerous womb removed by 3 robots which l;ft 3 tiny marks.
Another friend short sighted beyond belief had lenses inserted by robots BEHIND his own natural lenses…inside his eye ball.
A raft of monitoring equipment and techniques is available.
TOUMAZ (I declare an interest!) has been trialing disposable low energy signal plasters in US hospital. They take bio readings, sending it back to hospital computers by radio. Monitoring software is on apps.
2 areas:
1. what is available NOW affordable.
2. What is available if you PAY tons
3. What is in trials.
4. What information (nil technology based) techniques have been commenced.
GENERALLY
I notice hospitals handle increased loads more efficiently, and GPs have more they can do that was previously done by specialists.
Part of this is information that was out there not being used is gathered in algorithms…..yes no flow charts…. so the doctor is just like following traffic light signals or using a self-driving car.
I go in armed with research and he shows me an up to the second screen with what to try in what order.
I saw someone scanned on the spot with a small mobile phone and advise given on it’s screen read out, like a star trek scanner.
Sprays for new skin, printed organs, stem cells are coming in, gene therapy has had some successes, stem cell patches for teeth,…and we haven’t even launched nanobots yet…
Healthier cheaper foods.
Monitoring, preempting, delivery from idea to trials to delivery seems very faster but I haven’t surveyed that.
Simulation or larger scale systems, as computing has doubled in 3 years.
Watson is prototyping in medicine as partnership with delivery organizations and ibm.
the big one is A.I. as Ray said…we have understanding being built into apps because we know how to reverse engineer human understanding.
That is correct.
Kurzweil will have seen something from trends probably that makes directing engineering at google fundamentally important.
It could even gvmt security issue like steering emerging A.I. as A.I. amplification rather than Superintelligence.
You can see the exponential:
460 BCE Birth of Hippocrates, Greek physician and founder of the first university. Considered the father of medicine. Hippocrates bases medicine on objective observation and deductive reasoning, although he does accept the commonly held belief that disease results from an imbalance of the four bodily humors (an idea that persists for centuries).
c.130 CE Birth of Galen, considered by many to be the most important contributor to medicine following Hippocrates. Born of Greek parents, Galen resides primarily in Rome where he is physician to the gladiators and personal physician to several emperors. He publishes some 500 treatises and is still respected for his contributions to anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology.
910 Persian physician Rhazes is the first to identify smallpox, as distinguished from measles, and to suggest blood as the cause of infectious disease.
1590 Dutch lens grinder Zacharius Jannssen invents the microscope
1628 William Harvey publishes An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals, describing how blood is pumped throughout the body by the heart, and then returns to the heart and recirculates. The book is very controversial but becomes the basis for modern research on the heart and blood vessels.
1656 Experimenting on dogs, English architect Sir Christopher Wren is the first to administer medications intravenously by means of an animal bladder attached to a sharpened quill. Wren also experiments with canine blood transfusions (although safe human blood transfusions only became feasible after Karl Landsteiner develops the ABO blood-typing system in 1900).
1670 Anton van Leeuwenhoek refines the microscope and fashions nearly 500 models. Discovers blood cells and observes animal and plant tissues and microorganisms.
1747 James Lind , a Scottish naval surgeon, discovers that citrus fruits prevent scurvy. He publishes his Treatise of the Scurvy in 1754, identifying the cure for this common and dangerous disease of sailors, although it takes another 40 years before an official Admiralty order dictates the supply of lemon juice to ships.
1796 Edward Jenner develops a method to protect people from smallpox by exposing them to the cowpox virus. In his famous experiment, he rubs pus from a dairymaid’s cowpox postule into scratches on the arm of his gardener’s 8-year-old son, and then exposes him to smallpox six weeks later (which he does not develop). The process becomes known as vaccination from the Latin vacca for cow. Vaccination with cowpox is made compulsory in Britain in 1853. Jenner is sometimes called the founding father of immunology.
1800 Sir Humphry Davy announces the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide, although dentists do not begin using the gas as an anesthetic for almost 45 years.
1816 René Laënnec invents the stethoscope.
1818 British obstetrician James Blundell performs the first successful transfusion of human blood.
1842 American surgeon Crawford W. Long uses ether as a general anesthetic during surgery but does not publish his results. Credit goes to dentist William Morton.
1844 Dr. Horace Wells, American dentist, uses nitrous oxide as an anesthetic.
1846 Boston dentist Dr. William Morton demonstrates ether’s anesthetic properties during a tooth extraction.
1849 Elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to receive a medical degree (from Geneva Medical College in Geneva, New York).
1867 Joseph Lister publishes Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, one of the most important developments in medicine. Lister was convinced of the need for cleanliness in the operating room, a revolutionary idea at the time. He develops antiseptic surgical methods, using carbolic acid to clean wounds and surgical instruments. The immediate success of his methods leads to general adoption. In one hospital that adopts his methods, deaths from infection decrease from nearly 60% to just 4%.
1870s Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch establish the germ theory of disease. According to germ theory, a specific disease is caused by a specific organism. Before this discovery, most doctors believe diseases are caused by spontaneous generation. In fact, doctors would perform autopsies on people who died of infectious diseases and then care for living patients without washing their hands, not realizing that they were therefore transmitting the disease.
1879 First vaccine for cholera
1881 First vaccine for anthrax
1882 First vaccine for rabies
1890 Emil von Behring discovers antitoxins and uses them to develop tetanus and diphtheria vaccines.
1895 German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovers X rays.
1896 First vaccine for typhoid fever.
1897 Ronald Ross, a British officer in the Indian Medical Service, demonstrates that malaria parasites are transmitted via mosquitoes, although French army surgeon Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran identified parasites in the blood of a malaria patient in 1880. The treatment for malaria was identified much earlier (and is still used today). The Qinghao plant (Artemisia annua) was described in a Chinese medical treatise from the 2nd century BCE; the active ingredient, known as artemisinin, was isolated by Chinese scientists in 1971 and is still used today. The more commonly known treatment, quinine, was derived from the bark of a tree called Peruvian bark or Cinchona and was introduced to the Spanish by indigenous people in South America during the 17th century.
1897 First vaccine for plague.
1899 Felix Hoffman develops aspirin (acetyl salicylic acid). The juice from willow tree bark had been used as early as 400 BC to relieve pain. 19th century scientists knew that it was the salicylic acid in the willow that made it work, but it irritated the lining of the mouth and stomach. Hoffman synthesizes acetyl salicylic acid, developing what is now the most widely used medicine in the world.
1901 Austrian-American Karl Landsteiner describes blood compatibility and rejection (i.e., what happens when a person receives a blood transfusion from another human of either compatible or incompatible blood type), developing the ABO system of blood typing. This system classifies the bloods of human beings into A, B, AB, and O groups. Landsteiner receives the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for this discovery.
1906 Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins suggests the existence of vitamins and concludes they are essential to health. Receives the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
1907 First successful human blood transfusion using Landsteiner’s ABO blood typing technique
1913 Dr. Paul Dudley White becomes one of America’s first cardiologists, a doctor specializing in the heart and its functions, and a pioneer in use of the electrocardiograph, exploring its potential as a diagnostic tool.
1921 Edward Mellanby discovers vitamin D and shows that its absence causes rickets.
1922 Insulin first used to treat diabetes.
1923 First vaccine for diphtheria.
1926 First vaccine for pertussis (whooping cough).
1927 First vaccine for tuberculosis.
1927 First vaccine for tetanus.
1928 Scottish bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin. He shares the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Ernst Chain and Sir Howard Florey.
1935 First vaccine for yellow fever.
1935 Dr. John H. Gibbon, Jr. , successfully uses a heart-lung machine for extracorporeal circulation of a cat (i.e., all the heart and lung functions are handled by the machine while surgery is performed). Dr. Gibbon uses this method successfully on a human in 1953. It is now commonly used in open heart surgery.
1937 First vaccine for typhus.
1937 Bernard Fantus starts the first blood bank at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, using a 2% solution of sodium citrate to preserve the blood. Refrigerated blood lasts ten days.
1943 Microbiologist Selman A. Waksman discovers the antibiotic streptomycin, later used in the treatment of tuberculosis and other diseases.
1945 First vaccine for influenza.
1952 Paul Zoll develops the first cardiac pacemaker to control irregular heartbeat.
1953 James Watson and Francis Crick at Cambridge University describe the structure of the DNA molecule. Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King’s College in London are also studying DNA. (Wilkins in fact shares Franklin’s data with Watson and Crick without her knowledge.) Watson, Crick, and Wilkins share the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1962 (Franklin had died and the Nobel Prize only goes to living recipients).
1954 Dr. Joseph E. Murray performs the first kidney transplant between identical twins.
1955 Jonas Salk develops the first polio.
1957 Dr. Willem Kolff and Dr. Tetsuzo Akutzu implant the first artificial heart in a dog. The animal survives 90 minutes.
1962 First oral polio vaccine (as an alternative to the injected vaccine).
1964 Firstvaccine for measles.
1967 First vaccine for mumps.
1967 South African heart surgeon Dr. Christiaan Barnard performs the first human heart transplant.
1970 First vaccine for rubella.
1974 First vaccine for chicken pox.
1977 First vaccine for pneumonia.
1978 First test-tube baby is born in the U.K.
1978 First vaccine for meningitis.
1980 W.H.O. (World Health Organization) announces smallpox is eradicated.
1981 First vaccine for hepatitis B.
1982 Dr. William DeVries implants the Jarvik-7 artificial heart into patient Barney Clark. Clark lives 112 days.
1983 HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is identified.
1992 First vaccine for hepatitis A.
1996 Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal cloned from an adult cell (dies in 2003).
1998 First vaccine for lyme disease.
2007 Scientists discover how to use human skin cells to create embryonic stem cells.
http://blog.sherweb.com/7-really-cool-medical-tech-advancements-underway/
and
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2035319_2034529_2034513,00.html
(time lists top breakthroughs by year.
In Feb EU will fund 1bn over 10years probably to the reverse engineer the human brain.
We still haven’t modeled the synapse but that may come this year.
The GRID is used better (super computers linking)
The universe is thought to be a hologram from a serious physics theory.
Good luck surviving.
Resurrection is on (click on my name, left)
but A.I. is the big one.
The universe as information is a great way of looking at it. L. Susskind says the universe is information is the deepest physical truth he knows.
Medicine is an immediate part of that.
by asiwel
Well, this wasn’t a comment exactly, more like a treatise … but a really good one that I enjoyed reading. The case does seem pretty clear. There has been enormous progress (by conventional 20th century standards) in the last two years’ time between Jan 1, 2010 and Jan 1, 2013. Certainly not just in medicine, either. And I am hoping (expecting, actually) for that to continue pretty much unabated, both here in the USA and abroad. It is an exciting time to be alive.
by Mr.X
@ asiwel:
“It is an exciting time to be alive.”
I am not really sure if we add anything by repeating this kind of statement until the last part of the word isn’t true anymore;)
Think about it: The attribute exciting is not entirely objective (but the object is a stimulus), it is subjective in so far as part of it (the evaluation of the stimulus) is in your head.
Your excitement depends, for example, on your personal knowledge and experience (they are obviously factored in).
For example: “Today’s” people don’t marvel at “the wonders of printing”, or electricity, anymore, but “yesterday’s” probably did.
Generally speaking, we are excited by future prospects if we either are afraid of change or hope to gain something through said change.
Because (per definition) you can’t know what’s not known right now, it follows that from the point of view of a given living person, at any given time (barring some abnormalities in the individual, or “an end of novelty” [which you may not be able to truly know]), the subjective uncertain future is always exciting (positively or negatively..).
Therefore, despite the fact that it seems to be part of the etiquette in certain circles, it strikes me as superfluous to issue such statements (again and again).
Of course, this doesn’t mean that I disagree with you.De facto, it follows from this line of reasoning that I have to agree (given some [hopefully;)] taken-for-granted premises, e.g that I am not to “abnormal”), if I want to be consistent.
by asiwel
Well, I do believe you are correct that I may have mentioned my thought about it being an exciting time on several previous occasions … but that doesn’t put it in quite the same category as, say, saying “Good Morning” …. And, as you do say [after so correctly semiotically parsing (grammatically, syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically) my poor phrase], “the subjective uncertain future is always exciting (positively or negatively..).” … ipso facto
by Ian
I really hope you’re right. The cynic in me suspects that even if you’re right technology-wise, government/society will endeavor to find a way to cock it up.
by Peter the printer
How interesting. Virus protection companies constantly warn of virus attacks … now an ‘internet security company’, IIS, is forecasting worse, unless, of course, we pay them money to protect us!
Actually, murder is already being caused by internet; the inane conspiracy theorists who claim vaccines are killing people, poisoning children, enslaving us all blah blah blah, have clearly instructed the Islamist no-brains who are now killing Pakistani women vaccinating children against polio, citing vaccination as a ‘Western plot’ to wipe them out. That’s the trouble with mixing the 21st century with those still locked in the ninth century.