Securing The Internet Of The Body

via Purdue University Professor Shreyas Sen (Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and his students Debayan Das, Shovan Maity and Baibhab Chatterjee) comes a definative answer to securing the various machines and other connected implants we as a species are placing into and on our bodies to assist and record. Their work - entitled 'Enabling Covert Body Area Network using Electro-Quasistatic Human Body Communication' appears in Scientific Reports (a NatureResearch journal) (a portion of the Abstract of the journal entry appears below).

"Radiative communication using electro-magnetic (EM) fields amongst the wearable and implantable devices act as the backbone for information exchange around a human body, thereby enabling prime applications in the fields of connected healthcare, electroceuticals, neuroscience, augmented and virtual reality. However, owing to such radiative nature of the traditional wireless communication, EM signals propagate in all directions, inadvertently allowing an eavesdropper to intercept the information." - via the Nature ScientificResearch Journal publication entitled Enabling Covert Body Area Network using Electro-Quasistatic Human Body Communication'- via Purdue University Professor Shreyas Sen (Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and his students Debayan Das, Shovan Maity and Baibhab Chatterjee)

Medtronic Defibs Flaws, DHS Issues Alert

via Joe Carlson, writing at the Star Tribune, comes the tale of the dangers of medical device implantation, software & hardware vulnerablities and the Department of Homeland Security's watchlist for medical devices. The criticality of this issue cannot be overstated. Today's MustRead.

"The Homeland Security Department, which oversees security in critical U.S. infrastructure including medical devices, issued an alert Thursday describing two types of computer-hacking vulnerabilities in 16 different models of Medtronic implantable defibrillators sold around the world, including some still on the market today. The vulnerability also affects bedside monitors that read data from the devices in patients’ homes and in-office programming computers used by doctors." - via Joe Carlson, writing at the Star Tribune

PRC Begins CRISPR Editing Of Human Embryonic Tissues

"via John Timmer, writing at Ars Technica, comes news of the use of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (also known as CRISPR) gene editing efforts targeting the human genome, with (reportedly) live, human births as the result."

"The most complete report we currently have comes from the Associated Press. Its reporters talked to the researcher behind the announcement, He Jiankui of Shenzhen, China, in advance of his public announcement." - John Timmer, reporting at Ars Technica, comes word of CRISPR gene editing