 Barnaby Jack, a prominent white hat hacker and embedded systems expert with a penchant for pulling off spectacular hacks of devices at conferences globally, has died just days before a scheduled presentation at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. Jack later turned his focus to hacking automobile systems and electronic medical devices, showing how small systems and components that run critical processes can be used by an attacker to cause serious damage or death. Our internal research software will be revealed that utilizes a common bedside transmitter to scan for, and interrogate individual medical implants," according to promotional material for the event.  Security researcher Barnaby Jack on Wednesday showed how easy it can be to trigger a waterfall of cash from a standard bank ATM using readily-available software applications. In Jack's description of his presentation on the Black Hat 2010 Website, he says he was originally scheduled to give his ATM hacking demo last year, but the talk was pulled at the last minute "due to circumstances beyond my control." "I'm sure there could be lethal consequences," Jack said in a phone interview. It turned out the hotel did not actually own the gold machine and the American Embassy had to be called in to help resolve the misunderstanding, Rad said.
– One of the hacking community's biggest names has died in San Francisco, reports Reuters. Barnaby Jack, thought to be in his mid-30s, was known as a "white hat hacker" because he focused on exposing security flaws in banking and medical devices that needed fixing, notes CRN. And he was about to demonstrate his biggest discovery yet—that he could hack into implanted heart devices from afar. "I'm sure there could be lethal consequences," he told Reuters in advance of this weekend's Black Hat convention in Vegas. It's not clear how Jack died. He had previously shown that insulin pumps were vulnerable to hacks, but his most attention-getting stunt occurred at the Vegas convention of 2010 when he caused two ATM machines on stage to spit out cash. He called it "Jackpotting," notes the Chicago Tribune. He worked for Internet security firm IOActive, which tweeted, "Lost but never forgotten our beloved pirate, Barnaby Jack has passed."