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Hacking Ventilators With DIY Dongles From Poland:
As COVID-19 surges, hospitals and independent biomedical technicians have turned to a global grey-market for hardware and software to circumvent manufacturer repair locks and keep life-saving ventilators running.
The dongle is handmade, little more than a circuit board encased in plastic with two connectors. One side goes to a ventilator’s patient monitor, another goes to the breath delivery unit. A third cable connects to a computer.
This little dongle—shipped to him by a hacker in Poland—has helped William repair at least 70 broken Puritan Bennett 840 ventilators that he’s bought on eBay and from other secondhand websites. He has sold these refurbished ventilators to hospitals and governments throughout the United States, to help them handle an influx of COVID-19 patients. Motherboard agreed to speak to William anonymously because he was not authorized by his company to talk to the media, but Motherboard verified the specifics of his story with photos and other biomedical technicians.
William is essentially Frankensteining together two broken machines to make one functioning machine. Some of the most common repairs he does on the PB840, made by a company called Medtronic, is replacing broken monitors with new ones. The issue is that, like so many other electronics, medical equipment, including ventilators, increasingly has software that prevents “unauthorized” people from repairing or refurbishing broken devices, and Medtronic will not help him fix them.
[...] Delays in getting equipment running put patients at risk. In the meantime, biomedical technicians will continue to try to make-do with what they can. “If someone has a ventilator and the technology to [update the software], more power to them,” Mackeil said. “Some might say you’re violating copyright, but if you own the machine, who’s to say they couldn’t or they shouldn’t?”
I understand that there is an ongoing debate on the "right to repair". However, many manufacturers increasingly find ways to ensure that "unauthorised" people cannot repair their devices. Where do you stand on this issue? During the ongoing pandemic, do medical device manufacturers have the right to prevent repair by third parties?
Previously (Medtronic):
(2020-04-14) Raspberry Pi to Power Ventilators as Demand for Boards Surges
(2020-03-31) Professional Ventilator Design "Open Sourced" Today by Medtronic
(2019-11-18) US-CERT Warns of Remotely Exploitable Bugs in Medical Devices
(2018-10-17) Medtronic Locks Out Vulnerable Pacemaker Programmer Kit
(2018-08-15) Hack Causes Pacemakers to Deliver Life-Threatening Shocks
(2014-10-28) US Security Agencies Look at Medical Device Security
Previously (right to repair):
(2020-07-06) Fixers Know What "Repairable" Means--Now There's a Standard for It
(2020-04-21) 'Right to Repair' Taken Up by the ACCC in Farmers' Fight to Fix Their Own Tractors
(2020-03-13) Europe Wants a 'Right to Repair' Smartphones and Gadgets
(2020-01-09) Popularity of Older Tractors Boosted by Avoidance of DRM
(2019-06-21) Hackers, Farmers, and Doctors Unite! Support for Right to Repair Laws Slowly Grows
(2019-04-30) Reeducating Legislators on the Right to Repair
(2019-02-22) Right to Repair Legislation Is Officially Being Considered In Canada
(2018-10-13) 45 Out of 50 Electronics Companies Illegally Void Warranties After Independent Repair, Sting Reveals
(2018-09-21) John Deere Just Swindled Farmers Out of Their Right to Repair
(2018-04-17) Apple Sued an Independent iPhone Repair Shop Owner and Lost
(2018-03-08) The Right to Repair Battle Has Come to California
(2018-02-02) Tractor Hacking: The Farmers Breaking Big Tech's Repair Monopoly
(2018-01-28) Washington State Bill Would Make Hard-to-Repair Electronics Illegal
(2017-05-25) Apple, Verizon Join Forces to Lobby Against New York's 'Right to Repair' Law
(2017-03-08) Right to Repair
(Score: 1, Troll) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:49AM (14 children)
On one side, a properly repaired ventilator will save lives just as a new one.
On the other side, an improperly repaired one can kill by malfunctioning.
For sure, the ventilators are not like iPhones (that one can survive without) or as a tractor (which, improperly repaired, will only bring damage to the farmer that repaired it).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:09AM (9 children)
It is easy to come up with scenarios to support any argument you want.
Per Google, an average sized hospital has 20 ventilators. If two of them are broken, and patient 19 needs a ventilator to survive, and cannot be transferred in time to another facility-- that patient dies. If the two ventilators that otherwise were out of commission were repaired by unauthorized techs, and one fails while being used for that 19th patient, the hospital moves the patient to the other repaired unit. The patients odds are *much* better, as the alternative was certain death.
Now, look at poor countries, or countries with punishing sanctions against their populations like Iran, and unauthorized repair of ventilators is the only choice. Iran even has to re-use the disposable tubes and such between patients because of the inhumane sanctions. The Iranian health minister said that one Iranian is dying every 10 minutes due to covid [+ sanctions].
The United States and the UK together *caused* the mess that is the Iranian government that they are now sanctioning. The US and UK overthrew Iran's democratic government in 1953 and installed a right-wing murderous dictator. The population finally overthrew the dictator in 1979, but religious zealots were able to seize power. Now the US wants to punish the Iranian people for the US and the UK destroying Iranian democracy so they could steal Iranian oil to enrich their elites.
The Clinton sanctions against the Iraqi people killed half a million children under the age of 14 according to the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF). The death toll in Iran will likely be much worse. Just so political ideologues can score points with certain constituencies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:17AM
Jimmy Carter ended up backing both sides of that regime while president, and his brother who at the time had become an 'influencer' in DC chose to work with the Iranians until he was discovered and labelled a Foreign Agent barring him from those circles for life. As it turned out, the side they chose which appeared the least bad, turned out to have fooled everyone and actually been a religious extremist who used it as an opportunity to finally purge the myriad of political rivals he had, not unlike Indonesia a few years earlier.
Go look it up It's quite a read!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:20AM (6 children)
Someone modded parent post as "off topic". I don't believe it is off topic at all. There is a health crisis, common to all of mankind, wherever he or she may live. We should all care about each other's survival, right? Many here have taken me to task for refusing to wear a face mask. We care about each other, right?
Parent observes that Iran is taking a worse beating than necessary, because of historical as well as current meddling in Iran's affairs by the US/UK.
I think we should ship a couple thousand working ventilators to Tehran, along with all possible support for those ventilators. It would sure buy a lot of good will - even among the hard core America haters.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:27AM (5 children)
What does this and the parent post have to do with the "right to repair" and "need hackers from Poland to get parts for the ventilators"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:33AM (1 child)
Not much - except Polacks must be pretty damned smart if we need them to do our hacking. Amirite?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:57AM
Right.
With the note that the relative positioning on the smartness scale of Americans and Polacks can be read the other way 'round to express the same ordering (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:07AM (1 child)
From my reading of it,
1. Thanks to sanctions, Iran has to mod/repair their hospital equipment to attempt to keep things going.
2. Staff used to Item X in fully operational condition might assume, especially under stress, that a modded/repaired Item X functions the same way..
3. Even with doing this to equipment as a stopgap to keep them running, with the rate and numbers of infections, and lack of drugs, people in Iran are dying at a horrible rate.
Point 2 is the one that should concern us, as I'd assume these modded ventilators will most likely be deployed when the next peak/wave hits, and the staff operating them will be under maximum stress..minus the politics, look at it as a cautionary tale.
As to the Poles...the ability to 'Frankenstein' equipment into a useable state was cultivated in a number of the old Soviet Bloc countries, thanks to equipment being run into the ground and lack of spares, similar to the current situation in Iran.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:15AM
I'd put in the more general context of "There's no such a thing as the American dream for you".
That worked and works as a constant drive to build yourself into a better you (as individual), diversify to survive, because it's unlikely you are going to find something already built for what you need to make do.
Another example in the prresent: here are some guys that "invented" the technology for their business that's just good enough for what they do [youtube.com] (Russian with approximate English CC) - supersonic sand blasting using beach sand, compressed air and diesel fuel; galvanisation in jet - God, is that end surface rough or what? But I will trust that galv protection to do better than "the minimal thickness to make sure we get a repeat business at the end of the warranty").
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:41PM
Iran would not have hardly any functioning ventilators without unauthorized repair.
Right to repair should not just be framed as a first world problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:25AM
Everybody must be a master of debate in your parallel universe.
A pity the arguments you brought don't seem to have a point they are meant to support.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:00AM (3 children)
I'm fairly sure these ventilators won't be used instead but on top of the "high quality" ones they have. In other words, they will be used in cases where the alternative is not to hook the patient up to a "certified" ventilator but to hook him up to no ventilator and let him die.
Look up "heroic measure". That's basically what this is.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @10:03AM (2 children)
This is the difference that the "Primum non nocere" induces into the problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 11 2020, @10:19AM (1 child)
So, I take it that you're against amputating gangrenous limbs?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @10:23AM
Did I say anything about my choice?
Thanks God I don't need to make one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford