Story Archive

Shoot the Messenger

A man only identified as an information technology worker in Johnson County, Kan., says he bought a $30 antenna system to watch TV on his computer, and found that he was receiving hospital text pager transmissions — complete with patient names, diagnoses, and other personal information. Alarmed at the privacy implications, he took what he found to the Kansas City Star. The newspaper was able to locate several patients and confirmed the information he saw was genuine. Some hospitals were thankful to be alerted to their poor security. University of Kansas Hospital officials, for instance, “expressed gratitude” and said they fixed “a specific vulnerability in our paging system that may allow access to certain personal health information in limited circumstances.” But Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City fought back, claiming only “local hackers with specific scanning and decoding equipment — and technical knowledge of how to use it for this specific purpose” could possibly intercept their transmissions, which are transmitted on known frequencies in plain text with no encryption. (RC/Kansas City Star) ...Concerned citizen: dismissed as evil hacker. Actual evil hackers: ignored since that’s just what they do.