Crimes against patients in the Wild Wild Web

The internet has provided miscreants with new avenues of persecution. According to Wired, a group of no good sons-of-bitches hackers inserted some lines of javascript into an online forum frequented by epilepsy patients. The code displayed flashing patterns that induced migraines in some patients and caused seizures in at least one of the forum members.

“I don’t fall over and convulse, but it hurts,” says Fultz [one of the forum users], an IT worker in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. “I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn’t move and couldn’t speak.”

After about 10 seconds, Fultz’s 11-year-old son came over and drew her gaze away from the computer, then killed the browser process, she says.

“Everyone who logged on, it affected to some extent, whether by causing headaches or seizures,” says Browen Mead, a 24-year-old epilepsy patient in Maine who says she suffered a daylong migraine after examining several of the offending posts.

– from Wired

These hooligans should be thrown in jail.

In a related story, crimes against patients perpetuated through the internet could be more rampant than perceived as Information Weekly proves that simple P2P software can lead to serious security breaches. Technology writer Avi Baumstein used Limewire PRO to search through the Gnutella network for documents containing private information and was allegedly able to successfully retrieve medical records — including spreadsheets with “patients’ names along with their HIV and Hepatitis status.”