There are a lot of weird medical conditions that can happen to the human body. You’ve seen a lot of medical oddities, like the Tree Man of Java, right here at this very website. However, you’ve never seen anything like the infection in Mark Gasson’s body. The University of Reading researcher has become the first person infected with a computer virus, and he did it to himself deliberately to test the safety of medical implants. As it turns out, they’re not very safe.
Gasson had a RFID chip implanted in his hand, near his thumb. He used it to access his cell phone and get into the research lab at Reading without his ID card. He and his team designed a simple computer virus for the RFID chip, and waited. Sure enough, the virus got into several computers on Reading’s network via the implant in his hand. “The virus replicates itself through the database and potentially could copy itself onto the access cards that people use,” Gasson said of the virus he helped design.
It’s not a concern now, but as biomedical implants get more and more sophisticated, the risk grows that a hacker or hackers might design a virus to disable robotic arms or blow up pacemakers. If they can hack into your car, they can hack into your heart. The last thing we need is a bunch of killer cyborgs under Chinese control.
Tags: man infects himself with a computer virus, biomedical implants, medical implants, computers, computer-powered medical implants can get viruses, hackers, University of Reading, Mark Gasson, RFID chips, RFID chip passes computer virus from person to network