Jude says report by short sellers ‘false and misleading’

St. Jude Medical Inc. rejected allegations that its pacemakers and defibrillators are vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks, saying a report issued by short-seller Muddy Waters Thursday was “false and misleading”. The investment management company now holds a total of 258,214 shares of St. Jude Medical which is valued at $21,597,019 after selling 215,300 shares in St. Jude Medical, the firm said in a disclosure report filed with the SEC on Aug 11, 2016.St. Jude Medical makes up approximately 4.13% of Sector Gamma As’s portfolio. But he did not provide specific examples of errors.

The report rails on St. Jude for troubling cybersecurity vulnerabilities that are easily exploitable.

St. Jude Medical closed down -0.13 points or -0.16% at $82.75 with 19,58,505 shares getting traded on Tuesday. The campaign aims to inspire people living with psoriasis to raise awareness about their condition and celebrate their accomplishments. (NYSE:STJ) stock nosedived as low as 5.95% during the midday trading hours today, after Muddy Water Research announced in a research note its short position on it.

Instead MedSec chose to hook up with Muddy Waters and short the stock to earn a tidy profit.

“It’s staggering to me a company like MedSec would do this”. News & Ratings Via Email – Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts’ ratings for St. Jude Medical, Inc. “If we bring too much attention to these vulnerabilities, adversaries may want to target them”.

MedSec testers came to Muddy Waters because, said Block, if they had gone directly to the medical device maker, “St. Jude would sweep this under the rug”.

“Based on conversations with industry experts, we estimate remediation would take at least two years”. “These are flaws in a product that are being put in a human being’s chest”, Corman said. Muddy Waters is providing the United States Food and Drug Administration and Department of Homeland Security with a version of this report, and expects to facilitate dialogue between the agencies and MedSec.

St. Jude Medical, Inc.is focused on the development, manufacture and distribution of cardiovascular medical devices for the global cardiac rhythm management, cardiovascular and atrial fibrillation therapy areas, and interventional pain therapy and neurostimulation devices for the management of chronic pain and movement disorders. Since then, there have been a slew of reports about dangers in other products, from insulin pumps to hospital monitors to surgical equipment.

It’s not clear whether patients should be anxious.

Block also defended his decision to not approach St. Jude with the findings and instead potentially profit by shorting the stock.

“At the present time, patients should continue to use their devices as instructed and not change any implanted device”.

In a letter posted to MedSec’s website, Hemal Nayak, an electrophysiologist and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine, tells his patients who use implanted St. Jude cardiac electronic devices to discontinue home monitoring. Bugcrowd’s Ellis said. He wonders if an event like this could hurt cooperation between security researchers and vendors and make their relationships more combative.

“However, despite good intentions, this can set a worrying precedent”, he said in an email.

Typically when information security firm’s discover vulnerabilities in hardware or software, they disclose them to the manufacturer so that they can be fixed. He said he was aware of other nonpublic research showing other device makers have cyber vulnerabilities.