Killing me digitally: hacker shows how 'No one is off-limits' at Las Vegas hacker conference
Def Con conference hears how it's possible to get someone who's alive declared dead
Hackers at an infamous gathering in the US city of Las Vegas have been schooled in how to be online killers.
A rush to go digital with the process of registering deaths has made it simple for maliciously minded people to have someone who is alive declared dead by the authorities.
"This is a global problem," Australian computer security specialist Chris Rock said as he launched a presentation titled "I Will Kill You" at the Def Con conference.
The process of having someone officially stamped dead by getting a death certificate issued typically involved a doctor filling out one form and a funeral home filling out another, according to Rock's research.
Once forms were submitted online, certificates declaring the listed person legally dead were generated.
A fatal flaw in the system was that people can easily pose as real doctors and funeral directors, Rock demonstrated to a rapt audience.
Doctors practising general medicine often don't bother setting up accounts at online portals for filling out information for death certificates. An aspiring online assassin can step into that void and borrow the identity of a doctor.