The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a recall of 465,000 St. Jude Medical pacemakers in order to push a mandatory firmware patch of vulnerabilities in six types of radio controlled cardiac pacemakers.
According to the FDA, it “has reviewed information concerning potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities associated with St. Jude Medical’s FR-enabled implantable cardiac pacemakers and has confirmed that these vulnerabilities, if exploited, could allow an unauthorized user…to access a patient’s device using commercially available equipment…This access could be used to modify programming commands to the implanted pacemaker, which could result in patient harm from rapid battery depletion or administration of inappropriate pacing.” These scenarios could lead to death of an affected patient.
The FDA recall can be accessed here.