Barnaby Jack, a renowned hacker who sharply rose to fame after his extraordinary demonstration of hacking an ATM machine and exposing a security flaw in insulin pumps, died in San Francisco, Thursday.
The world has lost an elite hacker. The one who demonstrated the art of hacking an ATM machine which helped improve security measures. He will live through his findings and work to fix security vulnerabilities. Barnaby Jack died in San Francisco, Thursday evening, according to a police spokesman. Details of the death were not disclosed. The agency conducting an autopsy said that it would at least take a month before the cause of death is determined.
Jack was one of the world's most prominent computer hackers who worked at IOActive Inc., a security consulting firm with offices in Seattle and London, as a director of embedded devices. His extraordinary hacking skills showed security holes in tiny computers in various equipments such as cash machine or medical devices, which alarmed device makers to fix the loopholes in their software.
Jack's passion was to discover the security bugs before the criminals, longtime security industry executive Stuart McClure, who also worked with Jack at McAfee security firm, said in a statement.
"He was one of those people who was put on this earth to find vulnerabilities that can be exploited in a malicious way to hurt people," McClure said, according to Reuters.
Jack's mother and sister, Amberleigh Jack, live in New Zealand and he had a girlfriend in California, according to his employer. Amberleigh told Reuters he was 35 years old and declined to comment further. A lot of messages came up on Twitter following jack's death.
"So humbled by the social media flood of people that loved @barnaby_jack," Amberleigh tweeted. "Thank you all so much for your kind words."
"Lost but never forgotten our beloved pirate, Barnaby Jack has passed. He was a master hacker and dear friend. Here's to you Barnes!" IOActive tweeted.
Several other well-known hackers also expressed their grief on the loss of a friend.
"You'll be missed, bro," Dino Dai Zovi, well-known hacker, tweeted.
"We have lost a member of our family. Everyone would agree that the life and work of Barnaby Jack are legendary and irreplaceable," Black Hat said in a statement. Jack was scheduled to perform at the Black Hat conference that starts Saturday in Las Vegas. He told Reuters last week that he would demonstrate his hacking techniques to hack an implanted heart device that cause kill a person from 30 feet.
Jack's session scheduled for Thursday, August 1, will not be replaced. Instead the one-hour session will be left vacant for conference attendees to honor his life and work, Black Hat said in its statement.
