To the long list of objects vulnerable to attack by computer hackers, add the human heart.

The threat seems largely theoretical. But a team of computer security researchers plans to report Wednesday that it had been able to gain wireless access to a combination heart defibrillator and pacemaker.

They were able to reprogram it to shut down and to deliver jolts of electricity that would potentially be fatal — if the device had been in a person. In this case, the researcher were hacking into a device in a laboratory.

The researchers said they had also been able to glean personal patient data by eavesdropping on signals from the tiny wireless radio that Medtronic, the device’s maker, had embedded in the implant as a way to let doctors monitor and adjust it without surgery.

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Don’t call it a flying car. It’s a “roadable aircraft.”

It’s named the Transition, and the first full-scale model is taking shape inside a former machine shop on an industrial back alley in Woburn, MA. Between now and late July, the 10 employees of angel-funded startup Terrafugia will be spending “a lot of long days, nights, and weekends” in that shop, says CEO and founder Carl Dietrich. That’s because they want to show off their concept vehicle at AirVenture—the world’s largest aviation festival, held annually in Oshkosh, WI—and there’s a lot of work to finish first.

When I visited Terrafugia yesterday, technicians were shaping the grooves in the fuselage’s carbon-fiber skin that will hold the straps for the vehicle’s rocket-fired emergency parachute. They hadn’t yet attached the folding wings to the fuselage or the fuselage to the empanage (which will hold up the dual tails), and they had yet to figure out where to put the engine’s exhaust system. “It’s crunch time,” says Dietrich.
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