Introduction
In today’s world medical technology greatly improves the efficiency of medicine. Medical technology has a lot of advantages but unfortunately it also has its disadvantages. Recent studies have shown that Illumina devices, which are used for human genome sequencing, can become a target for cyber-attacks and be used to alter the human genome. That, in turn, could cause serious damage to patients’ health.
Illumina is?
Illumina is one of the leading genomics companies that makes DNA sequencing devices. However, even their state-of-the-art devices have proven vulnerable to attack by hackers. Researchers have discovered that an attacker could exploit vulnerabilities in the software of Illumina devices to make changes to the human genome.
What can hackers do in a cyberattack on medicine?
Hackers can alter patients’ genetic code and give them incorrect diagnoses and inappropriate treatments. Hackers can also access patient data, find out patient diagnoses, identify hereditary diseases, or reveal sensitive personal information about a person and use that information for their own purposes in the future.
Illumina’s response
Unfortunately, Illumina did not provide a comment on the matter. But this isn’t the only case where medical devices have proven vulnerable to cyberattacks. In fact, many medical devices have weaknesses that can be exploited by hackers to gain access to patient medical data.
