FDA warns users of cyber vulnerabilities in pacemaker programmers
The Food and Drug Administration has issued a cybersecurity advisory for two pieces of hardware that link to cardiac devices like pacemakers and defibrillators, citing a vulnerability that could allow unauthorized access to the programmers. The FDA said it confirmed that when the two models of programmers, which are made by Minneapolis-based Medtronic, have an internet connection, unauthorized users could exploit the vendor’s network to change the programmers’ functionality. “While we are not aware of patients who may have been harmed by this particular cyber vulnerability, the risk to patient harm of leaving such a vulnerability unaddressed is too great,” Suzanne Schwartz, a top cybersecurity official at the FDA, said Thursday in a statement. In response to the security and safety concerns, Medtronic said it disabled the internet-connected software updates for the programmers and that, as of Thursday, a company representative would manually and securely update all of the affected programmers. The […]
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