“The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday issued an alert about the first recall of a network-connected implantable device due to cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
The agency is instructing patients with certain implantable cardiac pacemakers from St. Jude Medical – now owned by Abbott Laboratories – to visit their physicians for firmware updates to address cyber vulnerabilities that can potentially be remotely exploited by hackers and that pose safety concerns.
Approximately 465,000 such devices are in use in the U.S., an Abbott spokeswoman tells Information Security Media Group. She did not immediately have information about how many of these devices are used outside the U.S.”