
Elite Hacker Barnaby Jack 'overdosed on drugs' - f_salmon
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25598791#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
======
realo
Heroine, cocaine _and_ a cocktail of other drugs?

And the guy is a top notch hacker about to embarrass some pretty powerful
conglomerates?

Sorry but I don't care how many bottles of champagne were in the room trash
bin. This has MURDER written all over.

For the curious, here is an interesting story which might, or might not, be
relevant:

[http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/suspicious_deaths_scie...](http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/suspicious_deaths_scientists_1.html)

~~~
wsc981
This story reminded me a bit about the death of UK hacker Gareth Willams[0],
who worked for the secret service.

[0]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams)

~~~
dotBen
Not really beyond a) they both died and b) they both worked in the field of
security. Any further comparison is a little contrived.

Gareth Williams was never a hacker - he was an academic mathematician who
later became employed by GCHQ. Unlike Barnaby's death, neither alcohol or
drugs played any part in his death.

The circumstances around William's passing is legitimately suspicious,
however, given the 'ritualistic placing of sim cards' and the fact that no one
has been able to prove it is possible to lock oneself in the sports holdal
from the inside.

------
sillysaurus2
_His physical symptoms indicated an accidental overdose of heroin, cocaine,
and prescription drugs. The report said Mr Jack 's girlfriend had found him
lying in bed unresponsive, with "multiple bottles of beer and champagne in the
garbage can".

Mr Jack's death occurred shortly before he was due to demonstrate how heart
implants could be hacked at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas._

This is an awful tragedy, but it seems hard to imagine that there was any foul
play involved. They would've needed to subdue him and then make him ingest
cocaine. Therefore they'd need to subdue him physically or chemically.
Struggling for your life tends to show up on an autopsy, as does being subdued
with chemicals.

It's not impossible, but the absence of evidence should lead us to accept the
facts at face value.

RIP Barnaby Jack.

~~~
jnardiello
<movie> Cocaine can be injected. As well as any other substance. Drive him
unconscious somehow (someone could push him drunk enough and sneak into his
room. Then using some anesthetic totally unconscious), inject a lethal dose of
drugs, cocaine and heroin. Now get out of the room somehow, either from the
door or jumping out of the window. </movie>

Ignoring the jumping out of the window part, seems quite plausible. Never
trust girls that you meet at the pub, especially if they look interested in
you and you are a computer guy.

~~~
lgieron
> Never trust girls that you meet at the pub, especially if they look
> interested in you and you are a computer guy.

A recipe for an amazing life.

~~~
undoware
You're misreading it, it's actually a clever bit of self-deprecation that I'm
going to steal the next time people are looking at me enviously.

------
tokenadult
Submitted once already (but not originally from the canonical URL of that news
source), with lots of comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7009350](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7009350)

And this same story was submitted two other times in the last day or so.
What's with the duplicate detector these days?

------
rdl
Having your (accidental, maybe stupid, very unfortunate) death picked apart
like this has been, in front of lots of people who knew you, must be really
bad. (well, I mean, you're dead, but knowing that this kind of thing might
happen to you sucks while you're alive)

~~~
DanBC
It can't be nice for the family.

It does remind me to leave a "i am dead" package with deletion instructions
for some things and passwords for other things. A list of accounts that need
to be shutdown or that people might want to download stuff from.

~~~
rdl
Back when I was much more likely to end up kidnapped or in a gun battle/IED
and dead, I had all that stuff set up automatically (much easier since it was
all on my own systems). (and went so far as to take down all web content
beforehand, just to buy myself a few more hours after being kidnapped for JSOC
pipe-hitting services to arrive). When I upgraded, I didn't transition it to
the new systems.

It's a bit harder with web services to do it automatically, as they end up
breaking the login process, adding 2fa, etc. frequently enough that unless you
test the whole system frequently, it probably wouldn't actually work. I guess
99% of the value is from mail, twitter, and facebook, though.

------
k-mcgrady
Were the flaws he was going to demonstrate ever made public or fixed?

------
benaston
Did those close to him know/suspect drug use before his death? Just trying to
gauge the plausibility of the accidental overdose theory.

~~~
pionar
According to the medical examiner's report[0], Jack's girlfriend and a friend
told the investigators that he "would take opiates and use Xanax," and that he
"would drink and occasionally use cocaine".

So the answer is yes.

[0]
[http://cdn2.sbnation.com/assets/3803095/barnaby_jack_autopsy...](http://cdn2.sbnation.com/assets/3803095/barnaby_jack_autopsy_report_san_francisco_medical_examiner.pdf)

~~~
joshstrange
Are there any other sources that he was a user other than her? I'm not trying
to pull out my tin foil hat but __if __I had gone to all the trouble to fake
an OD I 'd pay the GF off (and/or threaten) as well to say he had done it
before.

~~~
rdl
JFC, have you never been to a hacker con? Drinking and drug use is not exactly
rare.

~~~
joshstrange
No, I have never been to one before. I was just asking a question, sorry if it
was a stupid one.

~~~
rdl
We can't prove that he wasn't killed by space aliens. On the other hand, the
explanation is on its face quite plausible, and the level of evidence which
would need to have been fabricated to support another theory is far beyond the
plausible benefit to anyone in misleading the public as to his cause of death.

Drug and alcohol use, even to "dangerous" levels, is probably 20-30% of the
high-profile people in the hacker scene (or, really, people in the tech scene
in SFBA in general), at the very least. If Barnaby were a known teetotaler,
one of the hundreds of people who knew him pretty well would have stepped
forward. Given that they haven't, you can assess with high confidence that
this is what it looks like, rather than a grand conspiracy.

------
patmcguire
Don't know if he travels a lot, but that's generally when people get
overdoses. So much tolerance is psychological - a person readies their drugs
with the same ritual in the same room - that their body doesn't have the same
tolerance when it's taken another way. I think foul play

~~~
DanBC
Tolerance isn't psychological. People may be using drugs of unknown strength
or may be preparing them in different ways but they don't have heart attacks
from psychological tolerance.

I agree that suspicion of foul play is premature. Hope he gets a good autopsy.

~~~
furyofantares
> Tolerance isn't psychological.

Are you just speculating?

I haven't really studied psychology but have an interest in it. My
understanding is that in a familiar setting the body starts compensating
before the drugs are ingested.

From
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1384078](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1384078)

> These rituals produced drug-opposite physiological responses which resulted
> in an attenuation of the effects of the drug. Thus, tolerance was observed
> when the subjects injected the opiate, but not when the same dose was
> received by un-signaled intravenous infusion. These results are consistent
> with a conditioning explanation for the observed drug tolerance.

------
jnardiello
Afterall the "drug abuse" execution style is really used from time to time and
not only a Hollywood invention. Curious to see what he was working on lately.
I guess we'll never know. Being a hacker these days is a dangerous job.

------
SemanticCoder
Guess death by overdose beats death by umbrella.

------
adim86
Who takes heroin and cocaine and "other drugs" and then goes to lie in bed?

~~~
wsc981
Once when I used magic mushrooms, I went into a bad trip and to deal with the
bad trip, I lied on the bed, facing the wall.

I faced the wall, cause the hairs on my arms appeared to me like ants walking
on me and I also didn't want to look my friends' faces, caused their faces
looked very pale, which scared me a little.

------
drake01
RIP Jack! Anyways, I Posted the news some 20 hours ago.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7007589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7007589)
Hacker News works in mysterious ways. Or is it 'right place, right time'
bull$h!t !

------
lauradhamilton
Yeah. I'll bet he did.

------
Munksgaard
Not at all suspicious.

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infinitone
Move along lads... nothing to see here >_>

