A security researcher discovered an amateur radio broadcast on the internet that was collecting real-time medical data and health information from hospitals and medical centers in the United Kingdom.
The show was broadcast from a house in North London. It “caught” radio waves from the air and translated them into readable text. This allowed him to read on his computer screen all the messages about emergencies throughout the area.
For some reason, he also had a webcam installed to show the screen. So anyone looking at the screen could see everything he was writing.
Daley Borda, a security researcher, was at his home in Florida when he stumbled upon the radio show, specifically the exposed camera, and realized it was possible to read the text on the screen.
“You can see details about incoming calls – their name, address, and injury,” he told TechCrunch.
The messages that were streaming on the screen appeared to direct the ambulances where to go.
Daley Borda couldn't figure out who owned the show. TechCrunch tried to contact his internet provider to warn them about the data exposure.
The show's host collects and decodes pager communications from a nearby public hospital. Although the number of pagers has declined to almost zero since the 1980s, pagers still transmit a considerable amount of information every day.
Most major cities are covered by some form of paging service. Given the geographical location of the United Kingdom, amateur radio operators can often receive messages from different sources.
Amateur radio operators are well aware of the dangers posed by unencrypted pagers. In the UK, it is legal to detect the sound waves but illegal to reveal the content of the messages.
That's why the penalties could be much stricter for those who expose sensitive health data. Exposing personal and health information violates GDPR , the EU-wide data protection laws that came into effect last year.
