Unsecured Pager Networks
Unsecured Pager Networks#
Australian hospitals and emergency services are still divulging sensitive patient details in 2023! 🤦
- Full name
- Date of birth
- Residential address
- Phone
- Medical details
It is easy to receive pager messages.#
Receiving radio pager messages is a bit like turning on an FM radio in a car. Anyone can listen in.
Pager messages can be received using a TV tuner connected to a computer.
For example:
PagerMon: A browser based app for displaying pager messages from multimon-ng
Be careful though!
Teenagers keep getting raided by Police.#
It seems like every few years a teenager gets raided by Police for setting up a Raspberry Pi running PagerMon with an RTLSDR TV tuner and publishing sensitive patient details online.
Do not publish sensitive patient details online!
Here are some recent incidents:
Tasmania Police called in after ambulance patient details published online
WA Health information so insecure it was published for months by teenage ‘script kiddie’
What is the solution?#
STOP sharing sensitive patient details over unsecured radio pager networks.
Use end-to-end encrypted communication over the internet instead!