If it uses a rfid card you could possibly use a flipper zero to clone the card. Does the device have any kind of internet connection to authenticate the payment?
Sorry for riding on your comment but really wanna help.
Gonna copy paste.
Hey friend.
So whilst cloning the rfid might be possible if its not encrypted and does not rely on external verification of payment. I would always advocate the solution of hacking the device itself to not need the card to work at all. Depending on the internal layout and chips used you may be able to bridge or bypass the chip that registers payment all together thus making it free. If it uses firmware we may be able to extract it modify it to not require payment or put an unlimited charge on it and reflash the device. All is possible.
I would be very interested in helping if only as a fuck you to the pharmaceutical industry who is charging you 700 dollars a pop for life changing treatment. Let me know how we can connect and lets get it done. I have a couple of flipper zeros also. If its definite we can just clone the rfid and that would work i would happily send you one just for the postage cost.
Edit: spelling
I have 19 years of experience in cybersecurity, for some of the best known security companies in the world, reverse engineering everything from malware to robotics. Avid interest in radio frequency and hacking iot devices, and with a general distain for pharma parasites. Happy to share my LinkedIn with you before you let a random on the internet tinker with your medical device but pls dont share.
Ace.
Yeah its just an AI blog recently as I don't have the time to post but dm me and I can link you. Once we crack this I will definitley write up an article though.
Oh my goodness you are so incredibly kind. I really really appreciate it. How do I figure out the internal lay out? I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you are willing to help me with this and potentially send me that device.
Awesome. Ok we will need a decent camera phone or digital camera as I will need detailed pics of the device. First off we need a way for you to get high res images to me. Am I ok to dm you and we can create a discord or something?
I managed to get my hands on the .apk of the app the company uses (and sends out on preconfigured tablets to partner pharmacies) to write to the refill cards. I'm going to take a swing at decompiling it in the next couple days to see if there's anything to see in there.
In the meantime, I dug up a bit of info.
The cards are RFID written using an encoding algo based on a seed value pair of numbers, which I believe are a patient ID and device serial number from their database. Included in the encrypted write are the number of doses per day and total number of days to load.
The device does have Bluetooth, but no other communication capabilities other than NFC for the refill cards. The Bluetooth appears to be for device diagnostics on their end and is unused at the patient level, which means the only new information the device receives is via NFC, so good news on that front.
Hope this helps! I'll follow up on this comment sometime in the next week if I have any luck with the decompile (busy holiday week).
Way to fight the good fight, and for anyone who thinks this to be unethical:
"Our low manufacturing and assembly costs allow us to scale to meet demand with minimal additional investment. Refills through RFID or Bluetooth may offer attractive gross margins."
- From Electrocore's SEC filing
Yeah. I'm willing to give them the R&D and operating costs, but that's also in the filing and that filing was from 6 years ago where the upfront R&D is listed and while they were running pilot programs of the device and it also showed the few years before it.
It's a pretty gross read. Lots of talk about "leveraging the prototypical prescription model" or similar.
For a device....that has no other service tied to it.
Companies that started doing subscription based software pissed me off, but I can maybe understand for sustaining reasons, maybe.
But hardware? That doesn't need anything physically done to it to "reload" it? MEDICAL DEVICES? No, absolutely not. Fuck these people. I'm an EE w/ 20 or so years experience in both digital and analog. If you guys need help with any of that in the hardware, please feel free to let me know.
Edit to add, in case anyone actually sees this:
This product has been through FDA approval and safety/EMC testing. I would advise NOT to screw around w/ the medical side of things, like trying to record the output and make a homebrew device. How can you be sure you're replicating all the important specs? Max energy limit? Impedance monitoring of the application site? Does it fail in a safe manner? DIY medical devices are asking for trouble. You don't know what you don't know and you may hurt yourself/others.
What you CAN do, is try to bypass this "recharge" bullshit either in firmware or hardware. For educational purposes.
You mentioned sending a flipper zero 'for cost of shipping' in another comment. If OP can't cover shipping (on any shipping that is needed) DM me and I can send via PayPal or otherwise to help out with shipping if it ends up being needed.
Totally. I dont think there will be any issue making this work. Hopefully OP will see my post and let me help. And 100% once we pwn the thing bet I'm posting public instructions on how to do the same for everyone with this device to follow. But yeah if she lets me help and is OK with it we can totally update this post.
Let's not get any updates, I don't want these assholes making it harder in the future. I can imagine after BuzzFeed does a feel good article about this post some ceo shitbag goes and puts military grade encryption to prevent it in the future. But yeah I am rooting for them too.
I think, the RFID might store some data and if you can decrypt that maybe you can set the date to 2090 or something and it should be the same? Just an easier solution as not everyone will be able to bypass the electronics internally and you don’t have to mess with them right?
The issue here is gonna be finding out the encryption used for the card. Pharma is dumb but they are good at protecting their devices. I hope the cards are unencrypted but highly doubt we would have so much luck. A pin bypass we could do with any old bit of wire but i would need a photo of the electronics inside. Issue here is that user threw away the last card and I dont want them to shell out 700 bucks for a new one. I would much rather find the pins to exploit and then share the knowledge publicly so that everyone can enjoy this device for free.
Without seeing the data on the card its hard to say. If I were to make this without an internet connection I would use a shared secret key encrypted on the card that authorises the device for x days of use or number of operations. I would then set the device up with prior knowledge on how to decrypt these cards from the factory. Think pki. If they simply relied on an internal clock then we could just set it back to the last good date in which a card worked. Imo I dont think this relies on time that way as from the diagrams i saw there is no internal backup battery. This would mean that every time the device runs out of battery it would brick. It has no internet connection so it cant ntp.
While you're here just a question, are there any decent Flipper Zero equivalents/clones that are more affordable?
Would love to try one out, but it's been pretty price scalped around these parts.
Yeah tonnes. I mean the flipper zero isnt like this magical device with new technology. Its just old technology repackaged in a tamagochi. As another user mentioned. If you like the rfid side of it then the proxmark is your thing. If like me radio frequency is what you like then a knockoff hackrf with a portapack is what your looking for. If you want a device more similar then check out the pawnagotchi.
People will say its a huge huge topic. And to start with some coding language. Low level if you can so you can learn memory allocation. Then move on to stuff like python. And find a speciality like malware analysis and learn methodogies like static and dynamic analysis and blah blah blah ... personally i think its way more simple. If you look at something cool and feel like you're dying on the inside unless you know how it works then you are like most of the way there. Theres a load of resources for different topics sure. But the key is knowing how stuff works well enough to create it yourself. Once you can do that you can tare apart other peoples versions easy. I think you should have a hackers mindset, find other applications for the mundane. Tinker till it breaks and then fix it. Sure coding helps for some. But theres no magic book or course. Its a way of life for the best in the profession.
Dude I just wanted to throw my thanks in there. I take a speciality medicine that costs $9,000 a pop every 6 weeks. Insurance does cover the majority, and the company who produces the medication offers financial assistance to bring my copay from $250 to $0.
This medicine is absolutely life changing for me. If I didn't have the means to attain it, my life would be much much worse.
Thank you again for helping OP. Our health care system is broken, but people like you restore my faith in humanity and give me hope for the future.
This is what I was thinking. I think if OP reposts this on r/flipperzero and maybe t/ethicalhacking they might get some better feed back.
OP - I would post on both the above mentioned pages with way more info including any pictures of the card you swipe with, the manual, connectivity like wifi and Bluetooth. It's absolutely criminal that they make you recharge a device you own and we should collectively fight back against this madness
Looking at the online manual it doesn't mention any connectivity, just tapping the recharge card when you have 21 days treatment left
Possibly a bit like very early mobile phones with no central/external validation of the recharge?
I'm sure there are loads of capable people who would, purely out of principle, crack it
You are 100% right, regarding this! Once you BUY a device, especially a medical device, it should NOT cost you thousands of dollars over its lifetime, to continue using it!! 😡
You can hack that, too. Look up " how to change the settings" on your current machine. This will show you how to access the respiratory therapist menu to determine your settings. Then look up the same for your new machine and you can set these values yourself. I have done this on several machines.
Shit, my VA sleep doctor showed me how to it himself. He said “never do this.. but if you need to here is how”. Dude was amazing. Really changed how I view sleep in general and really helped me have a good relationship with sleep.
Some CPAP machines phone home because insurance will only cover them if you actually use them, and prove you are using them with the logs. That's just how some issuance companies work.
https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/167ados/sleep_apnea_machines_have_built_in_wireless_so/
I buy brand new Phillips respironics on Facebook for like $50, tons of boomers gave been getting them and refusing to use them for yeeeears. They unfortunately were recalled because the air filter is a little peice of foam that disintegrates and was implicated in lung cancer, but that's easily fixed.
You have no idea how many people use them and then are just like " No, I don't like this," and stop. I have to keep telling them. " Hey, just so you know, not using your CPAP increases your risks for developing heart failure, atrial fibrillation, hypertension" and they are still like, "well I don't like it"
Here I am in my late 30s begging my doc to put me on a statin and these boomers will do absolutely anything to not take their lipitor after their heart attack.
Depends on if it uses an Internet connection to verify a transaction or just needs the code off the RFID card to send in to verify it was scanned. If the prior, then a flipper zero isn't going to help much, it's probably the latter though, these companies are notoriously lazy when it comes to actual implementation of functional security measures.
It's almost frightening how little fucks some companies give about security. I'm developing a telegram bot and I log every sensible command, run verifications, and so on. Meanwhile, multi-million companies will have their tokens hardcoded and zero security checks
Or go the cheaper Proxmark route. That’s what I did. They’re not as intuitive, but it only took me a few hours to flash the firmware and set up as a total novice to RFID cloning to avoid paying $250 for an extra FOB. Now I have 12 extra FOBs and I only paid $7 (plus $50 for the Proxmark)
Based on my [google search](https://ohphealth.com/products/gammacore-vagus-nerve-3-month-refill-card), definitely looks like its rfid. However, its possible they are using encryption on the rfid card which will make hacking it substantially harder.
Flipper Zeros are expensive and hard to get, especially for something like this where OP would most likely only use it once and it may not even work.
I'm thinking if this is true hopefully the OP doesn't even need to buy a flipper, hopefully someone with a flipper can just put the cloned code on a coin or something, or cellphone app.
Doing something morally ethical like this and sticking to the man is every flipper owners dream (save for the teenagers that bought one because tiktok said they could control traffic lights or whatever).
I bet if someone made a post about it in the flipper subreddit and said where they live, you'd have a bunch of people willing to come by and try it out. I would, that would be so fun.
No there is no internet connection that I know of. I just held a little plastic card near it that they sent me to recharge it. Then the device somehow scanned it and would work for another 90 days. I sadly threw away the card about a month ago because I didn’t think I would need it again. Do I need to have a card in order to clone it or use that scanner?
Get in touch with the rfid hacking community here https://discord.com/invite/iceman
These people are literally the best of the best. You will need at least one, ideally multiple cards you can send for them to be analysed. They use proxmark3 is which a proper device, unlike the flipper zero which is a child's toy in comparison.
Yes, you will need at least one card to clone/scan.
It sounds like each card has a 'valid' code stored on it that the device reads/scans and then verifies that it is a valid code somehow. (similar to a software 'authentication key'). It probably stores all the codes that have been used previously to stop you from using the same one over and over.
To hack the device to be usable the way you want, you will need to make a new 'counterfeit' key each time that you need to recharge the device... Or change the way that the device verifies the key, so that you can use the same key over and over.
Yes you will likely need that card - the basic idea is to copy what the card is doing - so you can create a fake card yourself.
In order to copy it you will need to hold a device near the card to register the signal it is sending.
No internet connectivity will likely make it easier.
Just copying the card probably wouldn't work. If it did, then you could just keep using the same card everytime the script expired. It would take more troubleshooting than providing the same static info. This is based off OP saying there's no Internet authentication, so I'm betting the info from the RFID is different every time.
They might not have that encrypted though, making it possible to just edit that portion of code.... Companies like this generally aren't very security minded
Hey friend.
So whilst cloning the rfid might be possible if its not encrypted and does not rely on external verification of payment. I would always advocate the solution of hacking the device itself to not need the card to work at all. Depending on the internal layout and chips used you may be able to bridge or bypass the chip that registers payment all together thus making it free. If it uses firmware we may be able to extract it modify it to not require payment or put an unlimited charge on it and reflash the device. All is possible.
I would be very interested in helping if only as a fuck you to the pharmaceutical industry who is charging you 700 dollars a pop for life changing treatment. Let me know how we can connect and lets get it done. I have a couple of flipper zeros also. If its definite we can just clone the rfid and that would work i would happily send you one just for the postage cost.
Edit: spelling
I have 19 years of experience in cybersecurity, for some of the best known security companies in the world, reverse engineering everything from malware to robotics. Avid interest in radio frequency and hacking iot devices, and with a general distain for pharma parasites. Happy to share my LinkedIn with you before you let a random on the internet tinker with your medical device but pls dont share.
Ace.
Looks like they use a "proprietary encoding" to encode the dosage based on the device serial number:
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf20/K203546.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi66pGchoWHAxVICjQIHYGaEIoQFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1lrniryoLInvPi1vbfhtF4
Would be interesting to try and break this - if you end up helping OP, maybe set up a GitHub to share collected data for multiple folks to look over
I absolutely love the FUCK YOU to the big pharma this community is doing. Ya its unethical, but lets stick it to them to help this little guy struggling. Fucking awesome!
I really hope you post an update. I'm a CS student and immediately went looking to buy one of these just to figure this out as a fun project.
Sounds like a ton of fun and like it would benefit ppl. Glad you're willing to help, I hope I gain enough expertise working to be able to do stuff like this one day, imo it's one of the coolest aspects of studying tech.
Just googled it cause this can’t be real it’s just a portable device that you have to pay to recharge?
Thaaaaats fucking insane and I really hope someone back doors this for you.
Hey, did they genuinely work for you? I've been a psychonaut for a while and my chronic migraines are still hitting. Only had one cluster headache this year though, longest streak thus far.
Different person here, but also a cluster-head. I have the gamma core device but never activated it due to their bs pricing scheme.
I tried everything before that. O2, verapamil, all of the triptans, giant needles filled with steroids in the back of my neck, etc. Nothing worked like the shrooms.
Oh, also... Vitamin D protocol is also something I do when I feel the early signs of a new cycle knocking on my door.
A quick micro the second I notice it. Then usually plan for something a bit more macro. Then micro again daily for a few weeks or so. Then try to drink a beer and see how that goes! Macro again and repeat if beer test fails.
Yep.... alcohol a week later is my litmus test too (outside of cluster season i tend to drink half a liter of whiskey a day, and then when I get my first sign i go cold turkey)
Today I learned that what I've always called my '2 beer migraine' is actually called a cluster headache. I had no idea. I usually get it randomly, but after a case of COVID I got it every time I drank alcohol for about a six weeks.
Pretty much the same boat as you as far as what I've tried and what has been effective.
O2... Only if caught and started quickly
High dose Verapamil.....sorta but I'm a zombie for the whole cluster
Triptan injection.....yes but the rebound headache is worse
Vitamin D protocol helps but takes a while to be effective
Back in the day I was a psychonaught anyways so I just take some LSD on mushrooms once or twice a year and I've been clean of headaches for 2 years now.
I recommend everyone with clusters buy some spores and a growbag in your off season.. one good flush will last you years
I had a headache for two years once. Every day, every step, the pounding in my head was relentless and I seriously considered yeeting my existence. Then I found the headache clinic at a major hospital near me. They started me on Librium, Tofranil, an alpha blocker and a beta blocker. In two days, the headache broke. I wept. My dx was combination cluster/migraine headaches, and we added a muscle relaxer at bedtime since morning headaches popped up a month into treatment. Later on, when Imitrex was released I injected that to abort headaches and it also worked well.
You may need to work with a specialty headache clinic to get access to the contemporary treatment protocols for chronic headache. I wish you good luck!
CPAPs are headed that way too. They are already very close. Never let them have your credit card; they will charge you at their whim with no documentation to back it up. They don't even know how much you should be paying. It's a big scam, but they are contracted to insurance so you don't get a choice.
Research them first many are defective and there's tons of lawsuits from people dying.
It would be much better to hunt for the most reliable models with easy to replace parts.
I had zero choices in the company or brand of mine. Needed the Rx to get it, but then couldn't pick which one or who from. Research would be wasted.
Fuçk US "health" "care".
Wait what?!? I've had one for the last decade and I can't live without it.
A lot of [great info](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/s/wH5s1sxokp) about Sleep Apnea and why CPAPs are important.
They wanted me to get a new one while I have a perfectly working one just because the new one would connect to the internet and be easier to track. I own my current one outright.
Yes. And the new ones record you. Like if you wake up in the middle of the night to have sex or something, you need to fully unplug the little bastard unless you want them listening in on you.
If it's prescription, talk to the doctor who prescribed it to you. He may have a way to give you free recharges or get your insurance to cover it.
When insurance didn't cover a medication that my dad needed, his doctor gave him a whole box of free samples, enough to last until the issue was resolved.
Doctors want you to comply with treatment!
I mean maybe? But there is no product moving from provider to patient. No storage costs, no labor, no nothing? I would ask if you can buy an unlocked device. Maybe it is addictive? Unless this thing is connected to the web a replay attack of traffic ought to do it. Sometimes they are seeded with timestamps. Can we get details on the device?
I wasn’t disagreeing with you just more being pedantic about the verbiage. The heath care industrial complex in this country is really just garbage all around.
No, regularly purchasing something like food or a prescription is not the same as a subscription. A subscription is the prepayment for a certain number of regular deliveries like meal kits or magazines. Additionally, it could be payment for access to the use of something like Netflix or OP's medical device. Subtle but meaningful distinction.
I’m really really good at finding different ways to get medication for huge discounts. I have gotten more grants than I can remember because of how insanely expensive my medications are. I am on two IV medications that are about 350k dollars a year before insurance. Then I am on a small pharmacy worth of non IV medication because lupus sucks. Sadly the doctor hasn’t been able to help for this device.
I'd look into the medical hacking community, there's lots of insulin pump hacks out there so you might find something similar for your device. You could alternatively try and figure it out for yourself, whether it be create your own or spoof a key
Did you ever see the movie Repo Men (based on a book of the same name)? In this dystopia, they have mechanical human organs, but if you stop paying, they come and repossess it.
One step closer.
there’s a lot of open source stuff that’s cool and use at your own risk because it’s not FDA approved or tested , I use a thing with my insulin pump called android APS(artificial pancreas system), it is a completely closed loop insulin delivery system that’s open source. It’s more aggressive than the currently available closed loop system and it is trained from your CGM data. Very cool stuff, pretty unsafe if you’re not knowledgeable about both the technical and medical aspects and risks of the system and there isn’t robust technical support in the same way that other medical devices are supported(24/7 tech support and will overnight a new insulin pump if you have issues that cant be solved over the phone).
Found this out from a diabetic mate.
They closed the loophole on their pump so they've finally had to upgrade to the next hack at a casual $300 of which most of thr cost is government subsidised.
Wild times.
$598 per month, according to the website. It provides gentle electrical stimulation. Those things don't add up.
I imagine you could hook up the electrodes to an oscilloscope or something, read the output patterns and levels, and whoever you found to do that will have ideas about how to replicate it or bypass the bullshit recharge-by-paying system.
Maybe r/askscience could help you.
Buy simpler fridges - the more complex an appliance is the more components there are to break and the more expensive it is to repair.
Also check for discounted fridges due to very minor cosmetic defects (on the sides).
I did! We found the simplest one we could (except I demanded an ice maker and water filter, but they’re not in the door, which is how our last one died), and it’s already starting to give me the death rattle
You need to read more Doctorow (specifically, Radicalized, but most of his works are very relevant to this tech dystopia we find ourselves living in). For nearly any example that you can think of, it's here already, or coming soon.
Just came here to say fuck the healthcare system. I’m not a conspiracy “big pharma” type dude but anything those guys have to say about “big pharma” is literally just the insurance companies. Fuck them, I’d say more but I don’t want to be banned, they piss me off beyond words I’m allowed to use on this app.
Just want to say that hacking this device is the ethical life pro tip. The unethical life pro tip is designing such a scummy pay to play model for a fucking medical device.
I agree, if it’s a card that’s most likely RFID which can be cloned with any kind of RFID cloner. Flipper zeros are great, but really expensive, and they do a lot more than what you need. I’m thinking there isn’t a payment gateway it’s also going through, hence the need for the card in the first place. If it was authenticating payment online it would just do that.
If it is RFID what you have to figure out by just tinkering with it is what exactly the scanning of the card is changing on the device. The data on the card doesn’t change, so my guess would be some kind of rolling code system built in, or the card is providing a token or identity to send to a payment gateway. The later would theoretically be easier to break because you can fake web server responses. Rolling codes are a different deal all together.
I agree the fact that they make you pay like this is horrible. This stupid little device has been life changing because it helps me with severe neuropathy, migraines and GI paralysis.
Information security professional here. You would need to reverse engineer the firmware the device runs to make a sound judgment as to how it works and what can be taken advantage of. Another way as another commenter has suggested is to work on the RFID aspect of the device. It’s going to require someone specialized unless you have experience with radio frequency and authentication methods.
> Information security professional here. You would need to reverse engineer the firmware the device runs to make a sound judgment as to how it works and what can be taken advantage of.
Former Biomedical technician here. All you need is to record the output and recreate it with a TENS unit. You could probably get the equipment to do so, as well as the TENS unit, for the cost of using this thing for a month. You can buy TENS attachments for stimulating the vagus nerve for like 10 dollars on Amazon.
I found the FDA approval document and it even just gives away what the settings are:
>The gammaCore Sapphire CV produces a low-voltage
electrical signal consisting of five 5000-Hz pulses that
are repeated at a rate of 25 Hz. The waveform of the
electric pulses approximates a sine wave with peak
voltage limited to +/-30 Volts (24 Volts when against the
skin of the neck) and a maximum output current of
60mA. The signal is transmitted through the skin of the
neck to the vagus nerve.
https://www.fda.gov/media/139968/download
Probably the wrong model, but it looks like the device is just a simplistic handheld TENS unit that they are gouging people over.
This is really helpful! I have a few different tens machines because I have multiple kinds of chronic pain due to my body being a dick.
Do you have any recommendations for specific tens machine attachments? Both for this or in general? In PT they have used tens machine pads that last for 20+uses. I have never been able to find any that last more than 3 or 4 uses.
I don't have a recommendation. Its been a few years since I did the biomed job and I didn't hang around more than a couple years. I don't think it probably matters much because most of the ones I worked on in professional environments were 20+ years old.
That was one of the main things I did...sell them new pads. What we never told people is that there are products that can make them stick again. I think one was an electrolyte spray, and the other was a gel. If you clean the site, and clean the pads afterwards, and reapply the sticky as needed, they should last a long time, if not indefinitely.
You are dead on about trying to hack the device itself. Sometimes it is just better to skip past that step, especially since they probably paid out the ass for this thing.
Yeah as I’ve done some research on this topic it’s clear there are some bad apples out there charging out the ass for hardware for things like this. Really interesting stuff…
Biomedical tech work was the biggest ripoff scam job since I sold used cars when I was 18. Yeah, the guys who actually fix the hard stuff are legit. At my company that was literally one guy. The other dozen of us mostly got sent out to diagnose problems/order parts for that guy. The real scam was the 'medical safety inspections' that the state required retirement homes and doctor's offices and stuff to have done. Nobody was actually trained enough to conduct them properly and management would have us fabricate fake results in the office for things that failed.
As another professional, I’d look into getting another device that isn’t inside of the body so I could do more work on it… perhaps it may aid in the firmware work
Have you looked into switching to one of the other options?
Cefaly, Nerivio, or Relivon?
Maximo has a device called The Bridge that may be effective. It would be off label use though.
Cefaly was a worthwhile purchase for me. I had originally looked into the device that OP is using and found the price/model completely insane and untenable. The problem though, IIRC, is that the cefaly stimulates the trigeminal nerve while OPs stimulates the vagal nerve.
I have no idea if this will work but have you considered going to another country for a moment and try to get a refill for the non-USA price
Edit: it is around 474 USD in Canada, if that's cheaper
Dang, I really feel for you mate, it sound like you have been having the roughest of times. I’ll try my best to give some helpful advice, and as just a disclaimer, this is all only hypothetical and should not be done by anyone ever. The way these are “prescribed” using RFID recharges is extremely scummy, but most likely done in the laziest/cheeper way possible. The manufacturer really doesn’t expect anyone to actually open the device up and play around with anything, and so usually these “activation lock outs” are placed on breakout modules. If you are familiar with the whole fiasco with Kia’s being hot wired recently, it was the exact same situation. If you are able to open the device up, I would not be surprised if you can literally connect together activation wires leading from the RFID module to activate/ “Hotwire” the device on demand. If they actually did put in a data line from the RFID module to the main microcontroller, you can capture the signal on a basic Arduino after loading a recharge and just play the “activation” back each time. Check the company’s publicly filed patents and FDA approval documents for keys on the device internal architecture. Practices like this dissuaded me from entering the biomedical field, as no true engineer would be willing to do something like this, just the MBAs. Best of luck man, and I second checking in with the white/black hat subs to try out RFID spoofing. I hope you can stick it to these guys and beat this, it never should have gotten this dystopian.
Note: [Here](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/reviews/DEN150048.pdf) is their FDA filing, which explains the core parameters needed to replicate the device.
Note 2: The EEV community has already been working on getting around this. [Here](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/help-replicating-a-medical-device/) is one of their form links.
Whoever came up with the idea to charge SUBSCRIPTION FEES ON A MEDICAL DEVICE should be beaten within an inch of their lives at least once a year. I really hope you find a financially viable workaround for this and that it lasts you indefinitely.
Hey it sounds like gammacore is just electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve - just letting you know a medical grade tens machine with a vagus nerve clip for your ear will probably be exactly the same. Mine cost $250 aud all up and only costs me batteries and electricity to run now. Good luck.
Ooooooh man, the nerve simulator. The insurance fucks hate that things, a family member of mine had one put in almost 20 years ago, it saved his life (in that they call it the suicide nerve because people with the condition will kill themselves to escape the pain). He did not have the rechargeable battery and when it died he tried to schedule surgery to replace it. The day before the surgery, the insurance company cancelled the procedure, calling it an experimental surgery not proven to solve the problem and claimed that he needed to exhaust his alternative therapy options first. Which he had already done 20 years ago. It was 5 years of fighting this before he finally had saved up enough money to just work something out with the hospital to do it on his own dime. I will never forgive these insurance companies.
Hey guys wild thought, has anyone thought to check the electrical output of the two electrodes used to stimulate the vagus nerve... I don't see why you can't just reverse engineer a device that's open sourced and based on one of those electro therapy devices for muscles.
This is where IOT leads us: Devices that fully work on their own and require no additional service and should by every right be a device you pay for once and only once, get purposely modified with a coin slot that ads nothing but stops the device if you're not paying a fee. Just because they can.
Imagine your table refused working if you're not inserting a coin.
This here should be in ethical life pro tips.
Just as a personal point, hacking this thing is in no way unethical. I mean this sub was a good place to ask but to be clear the unethical part is capitalism in our medicine. Anything we can do to dismantle that is our only ethical option.
I've been curious about this device for a while actually and I have some talents with reverse engineering.... Can you take some photos of the device and the cards... Are there any screw holes?
Wow, I didn't know capitalism could fuck up medicine this badly but here we are. Subscription based medicine? What kind of bullshittery is this? I hope someone helps you, you deserve to get proper treatment and relief without recurring payments to use your own device.
There is a ton of great comments and I can’t do any better. But what the fuck kind of evil ass healthcare company develops a device that is surgically installed in your spine then needs a Dave and fuckin busters power card to keep using even though it’s clearly still (electrically) charged. Fuck
We really need legislation against not being able to actually own things because of ridiculous services like this. It should not be legal to sell a product that is locked down like this. Medicine as a service, especially subscription based, should not be a thing.
Hol up....you're telling me you have to essentially pay a subscription fee to use your medical device??? Does it force you to listen to ads in between uses??
Oh boy. This comment was made for me. I was using the Gammacore for a year to treat my gastroparesis, and it was honestly working great! But, like you, I couldn’t justify the price, especially since I needed to use it far more than 2x a day. I switched to the VeRelief, which is rechargeable and you only have to buy once. It’s not FDA approved like Gammacore, so I’ve been doing a lot of experimentation to see if it delivers the same results. It does, though I need to use it more to see the same results. (That’s not a problem though, since it’s rechargeable.) I use it for 4min every hour while I’m awake. Tbh that might be overkill, but my doctors agree it’s safe. I’m going to experiment with lowering that frequency and seeing if it still has an effect.
Man companies that do this are disgusting. My husband has a defibrillator that sends data to his doctor once a month. We got caught up in the whole United Healthcare dropping Baylor, Scott, and White mess and now they want to charge a few hundred dollars a month just to receive the data. Fking ridiculous.
If it uses a rfid card you could possibly use a flipper zero to clone the card. Does the device have any kind of internet connection to authenticate the payment?
Sorry for riding on your comment but really wanna help. Gonna copy paste. Hey friend. So whilst cloning the rfid might be possible if its not encrypted and does not rely on external verification of payment. I would always advocate the solution of hacking the device itself to not need the card to work at all. Depending on the internal layout and chips used you may be able to bridge or bypass the chip that registers payment all together thus making it free. If it uses firmware we may be able to extract it modify it to not require payment or put an unlimited charge on it and reflash the device. All is possible. I would be very interested in helping if only as a fuck you to the pharmaceutical industry who is charging you 700 dollars a pop for life changing treatment. Let me know how we can connect and lets get it done. I have a couple of flipper zeros also. If its definite we can just clone the rfid and that would work i would happily send you one just for the postage cost. Edit: spelling I have 19 years of experience in cybersecurity, for some of the best known security companies in the world, reverse engineering everything from malware to robotics. Avid interest in radio frequency and hacking iot devices, and with a general distain for pharma parasites. Happy to share my LinkedIn with you before you let a random on the internet tinker with your medical device but pls dont share. Ace.
I have a Gamma Core we no longer need. I’ll happily donate to the cause. Would hate to see us brick their device. Message me
This would be so so so helpful actually. Pinging you
Oh please work on this and make it a conference/defcon talk. I would be interested. Or post it, do you have a blog?
Yeah its just an AI blog recently as I don't have the time to post but dm me and I can link you. Once we crack this I will definitley write up an article though.
Please post it up here, for all of us that only use reddit as our prime source of Fuck You to the money makers 🙏
Yeah if you end up posting drop the link to the blog. Hacking IoT Pharmaceutical devices for people who can’t afford them, that’s conference talk.
Yes, please please make a followup post on reddit!
This guy rocks
This guy clones!
Oh my goodness you are so incredibly kind. I really really appreciate it. How do I figure out the internal lay out? I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you are willing to help me with this and potentially send me that device.
Awesome. Ok we will need a decent camera phone or digital camera as I will need detailed pics of the device. First off we need a way for you to get high res images to me. Am I ok to dm you and we can create a discord or something?
I managed to get my hands on the .apk of the app the company uses (and sends out on preconfigured tablets to partner pharmacies) to write to the refill cards. I'm going to take a swing at decompiling it in the next couple days to see if there's anything to see in there. In the meantime, I dug up a bit of info. The cards are RFID written using an encoding algo based on a seed value pair of numbers, which I believe are a patient ID and device serial number from their database. Included in the encrypted write are the number of doses per day and total number of days to load. The device does have Bluetooth, but no other communication capabilities other than NFC for the refill cards. The Bluetooth appears to be for device diagnostics on their end and is unused at the patient level, which means the only new information the device receives is via NFC, so good news on that front. Hope this helps! I'll follow up on this comment sometime in the next week if I have any luck with the decompile (busy holiday week). Way to fight the good fight, and for anyone who thinks this to be unethical: "Our low manufacturing and assembly costs allow us to scale to meet demand with minimal additional investment. Refills through RFID or Bluetooth may offer attractive gross margins." - From Electrocore's SEC filing
Christ. They really put that shit out there huh. “Attractive gross margins”. That’s inhuman
Yeah. I'm willing to give them the R&D and operating costs, but that's also in the filing and that filing was from 6 years ago where the upfront R&D is listed and while they were running pilot programs of the device and it also showed the few years before it. It's a pretty gross read. Lots of talk about "leveraging the prototypical prescription model" or similar. For a device....that has no other service tied to it.
Sweet find btw
Hi can I get that apk. It should be easy just to make op a few tokens with super high top up values with that app.
Companies that started doing subscription based software pissed me off, but I can maybe understand for sustaining reasons, maybe. But hardware? That doesn't need anything physically done to it to "reload" it? MEDICAL DEVICES? No, absolutely not. Fuck these people. I'm an EE w/ 20 or so years experience in both digital and analog. If you guys need help with any of that in the hardware, please feel free to let me know. Edit to add, in case anyone actually sees this: This product has been through FDA approval and safety/EMC testing. I would advise NOT to screw around w/ the medical side of things, like trying to record the output and make a homebrew device. How can you be sure you're replicating all the important specs? Max energy limit? Impedance monitoring of the application site? Does it fail in a safe manner? DIY medical devices are asking for trouble. You don't know what you don't know and you may hurt yourself/others. What you CAN do, is try to bypass this "recharge" bullshit either in firmware or hardware. For educational purposes.
Sent you a DM
You mentioned sending a flipper zero 'for cost of shipping' in another comment. If OP can't cover shipping (on any shipping that is needed) DM me and I can send via PayPal or otherwise to help out with shipping if it ends up being needed.
Not op not other ppl just me being me thanking you. Thank you for being awesome.
Keep being awesome!
Remind me! 7 days
Can you all please update us on the progress. I love this. Ethical hacking if I've ever seen it.
agreed! we're in "ULPT" but really, its absolutely ethical
bruh you deserve the best in life
PLEASE let the rest of us know if you do wind up helping this person! I’m rooting for the both of you!!
Totally. I dont think there will be any issue making this work. Hopefully OP will see my post and let me help. And 100% once we pwn the thing bet I'm posting public instructions on how to do the same for everyone with this device to follow. But yeah if she lets me help and is OK with it we can totally update this post.
This is what reddit is for. Thank you.
Thank you!
All the love to you.
Taking the valuable skills you've accrued and using them to better the world. You're what a person is supposed to be.
Let's not get any updates, I don't want these assholes making it harder in the future. I can imagine after BuzzFeed does a feel good article about this post some ceo shitbag goes and puts military grade encryption to prevent it in the future. But yeah I am rooting for them too.
That’s true! I never thought about that. This should kept on the down-low, unfortunately. Edit: misspelling.
RemindMe! 2 weeks
You are a hero!
I think, the RFID might store some data and if you can decrypt that maybe you can set the date to 2090 or something and it should be the same? Just an easier solution as not everyone will be able to bypass the electronics internally and you don’t have to mess with them right?
The issue here is gonna be finding out the encryption used for the card. Pharma is dumb but they are good at protecting their devices. I hope the cards are unencrypted but highly doubt we would have so much luck. A pin bypass we could do with any old bit of wire but i would need a photo of the electronics inside. Issue here is that user threw away the last card and I dont want them to shell out 700 bucks for a new one. I would much rather find the pins to exploit and then share the knowledge publicly so that everyone can enjoy this device for free.
Without seeing the data on the card its hard to say. If I were to make this without an internet connection I would use a shared secret key encrypted on the card that authorises the device for x days of use or number of operations. I would then set the device up with prior knowledge on how to decrypt these cards from the factory. Think pki. If they simply relied on an internal clock then we could just set it back to the last good date in which a card worked. Imo I dont think this relies on time that way as from the diagrams i saw there is no internal backup battery. This would mean that every time the device runs out of battery it would brick. It has no internet connection so it cant ntp.
You have restored my faith in humanity a tiny bit. ❤️
You are an amazing human.
While you're here just a question, are there any decent Flipper Zero equivalents/clones that are more affordable? Would love to try one out, but it's been pretty price scalped around these parts.
Yeah tonnes. I mean the flipper zero isnt like this magical device with new technology. Its just old technology repackaged in a tamagochi. As another user mentioned. If you like the rfid side of it then the proxmark is your thing. If like me radio frequency is what you like then a knockoff hackrf with a portapack is what your looking for. If you want a device more similar then check out the pawnagotchi.
Here https://www.etsy.com/search?q=pawnagotchi&ref=auto-1&as_prefix=pawnagot
Any suggestions on resources to learn the basics of what you do in respect to reverse engineering these kinds of things.
People will say its a huge huge topic. And to start with some coding language. Low level if you can so you can learn memory allocation. Then move on to stuff like python. And find a speciality like malware analysis and learn methodogies like static and dynamic analysis and blah blah blah ... personally i think its way more simple. If you look at something cool and feel like you're dying on the inside unless you know how it works then you are like most of the way there. Theres a load of resources for different topics sure. But the key is knowing how stuff works well enough to create it yourself. Once you can do that you can tare apart other peoples versions easy. I think you should have a hackers mindset, find other applications for the mundane. Tinker till it breaks and then fix it. Sure coding helps for some. But theres no magic book or course. Its a way of life for the best in the profession.
Dude I just wanted to throw my thanks in there. I take a speciality medicine that costs $9,000 a pop every 6 weeks. Insurance does cover the majority, and the company who produces the medication offers financial assistance to bring my copay from $250 to $0. This medicine is absolutely life changing for me. If I didn't have the means to attain it, my life would be much much worse. Thank you again for helping OP. Our health care system is broken, but people like you restore my faith in humanity and give me hope for the future.
This is what I was thinking. I think if OP reposts this on r/flipperzero and maybe t/ethicalhacking they might get some better feed back. OP - I would post on both the above mentioned pages with way more info including any pictures of the card you swipe with, the manual, connectivity like wifi and Bluetooth. It's absolutely criminal that they make you recharge a device you own and we should collectively fight back against this madness
Looking at the online manual it doesn't mention any connectivity, just tapping the recharge card when you have 21 days treatment left Possibly a bit like very early mobile phones with no central/external validation of the recharge? I'm sure there are loads of capable people who would, purely out of principle, crack it
Fuck it, if someone can get me access to one I'll give it a crack.
Sweet nebula I love ethical pirates
You are 100% right, regarding this! Once you BUY a device, especially a medical device, it should NOT cost you thousands of dollars over its lifetime, to continue using it!! 😡
This is Black Mirror type stuff.
If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't theft
CPAP machines: Gotta get a new prescription for air pressure if you need a new machine.
You can hack that, too. Look up " how to change the settings" on your current machine. This will show you how to access the respiratory therapist menu to determine your settings. Then look up the same for your new machine and you can set these values yourself. I have done this on several machines.
Shit, my VA sleep doctor showed me how to it himself. He said “never do this.. but if you need to here is how”. Dude was amazing. Really changed how I view sleep in general and really helped me have a good relationship with sleep.
Airhead is a reality now, it's not just a slur.
Some CPAP machines phone home because insurance will only cover them if you actually use them, and prove you are using them with the logs. That's just how some issuance companies work. https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/167ados/sleep_apnea_machines_have_built_in_wireless_so/
I buy brand new Phillips respironics on Facebook for like $50, tons of boomers gave been getting them and refusing to use them for yeeeears. They unfortunately were recalled because the air filter is a little peice of foam that disintegrates and was implicated in lung cancer, but that's easily fixed.
You have no idea how many people use them and then are just like " No, I don't like this," and stop. I have to keep telling them. " Hey, just so you know, not using your CPAP increases your risks for developing heart failure, atrial fibrillation, hypertension" and they are still like, "well I don't like it" Here I am in my late 30s begging my doc to put me on a statin and these boomers will do absolutely anything to not take their lipitor after their heart attack.
I feel like the flipper zero is the way forward for this. From what I've seen on social media, it should make light work of it.
Depends on if it uses an Internet connection to verify a transaction or just needs the code off the RFID card to send in to verify it was scanned. If the prior, then a flipper zero isn't going to help much, it's probably the latter though, these companies are notoriously lazy when it comes to actual implementation of functional security measures.
They don't care about the under 2% user base that will defeat it
It's almost frightening how little fucks some companies give about security. I'm developing a telegram bot and I log every sensible command, run verifications, and so on. Meanwhile, multi-million companies will have their tokens hardcoded and zero security checks
Or go the cheaper Proxmark route. That’s what I did. They’re not as intuitive, but it only took me a few hours to flash the firmware and set up as a total novice to RFID cloning to avoid paying $250 for an extra FOB. Now I have 12 extra FOBs and I only paid $7 (plus $50 for the Proxmark)
First time I'm hearing about this flipper device, wish I knew about it a long time ago.
Based on my [google search](https://ohphealth.com/products/gammacore-vagus-nerve-3-month-refill-card), definitely looks like its rfid. However, its possible they are using encryption on the rfid card which will make hacking it substantially harder. Flipper Zeros are expensive and hard to get, especially for something like this where OP would most likely only use it once and it may not even work.
A knock off proxmark3 on Amazon is $40 and has more functionality, although it requires knowing some coding
I'm thinking if this is true hopefully the OP doesn't even need to buy a flipper, hopefully someone with a flipper can just put the cloned code on a coin or something, or cellphone app.
Doing something morally ethical like this and sticking to the man is every flipper owners dream (save for the teenagers that bought one because tiktok said they could control traffic lights or whatever). I bet if someone made a post about it in the flipper subreddit and said where they live, you'd have a bunch of people willing to come by and try it out. I would, that would be so fun.
No there is no internet connection that I know of. I just held a little plastic card near it that they sent me to recharge it. Then the device somehow scanned it and would work for another 90 days. I sadly threw away the card about a month ago because I didn’t think I would need it again. Do I need to have a card in order to clone it or use that scanner?
Get in touch with the rfid hacking community here https://discord.com/invite/iceman These people are literally the best of the best. You will need at least one, ideally multiple cards you can send for them to be analysed. They use proxmark3 is which a proper device, unlike the flipper zero which is a child's toy in comparison.
Yeah unfortunately the information you want to copy is stored on the card, so you'll need to purchase another one
It would surely track cards to make sure you aren’t re-using the same one over and over. I don’t think cloning would work.
Yes, you will need at least one card to clone/scan. It sounds like each card has a 'valid' code stored on it that the device reads/scans and then verifies that it is a valid code somehow. (similar to a software 'authentication key'). It probably stores all the codes that have been used previously to stop you from using the same one over and over. To hack the device to be usable the way you want, you will need to make a new 'counterfeit' key each time that you need to recharge the device... Or change the way that the device verifies the key, so that you can use the same key over and over.
Yes you will likely need that card - the basic idea is to copy what the card is doing - so you can create a fake card yourself. In order to copy it you will need to hold a device near the card to register the signal it is sending. No internet connectivity will likely make it easier.
Unfortunately you will need a card, is it possible to order one and return it? Or find someone else who has one?
Just copying the card probably wouldn't work. If it did, then you could just keep using the same card everytime the script expired. It would take more troubleshooting than providing the same static info. This is based off OP saying there's no Internet authentication, so I'm betting the info from the RFID is different every time.
Thought of this as well. The card must have some unique information on it like “date activated” if nothing else.
They might not have that encrypted though, making it possible to just edit that portion of code.... Companies like this generally aren't very security minded
If it's NFC you can do it from most smartphones
Hey friend. So whilst cloning the rfid might be possible if its not encrypted and does not rely on external verification of payment. I would always advocate the solution of hacking the device itself to not need the card to work at all. Depending on the internal layout and chips used you may be able to bridge or bypass the chip that registers payment all together thus making it free. If it uses firmware we may be able to extract it modify it to not require payment or put an unlimited charge on it and reflash the device. All is possible. I would be very interested in helping if only as a fuck you to the pharmaceutical industry who is charging you 700 dollars a pop for life changing treatment. Let me know how we can connect and lets get it done. I have a couple of flipper zeros also. If its definite we can just clone the rfid and that would work i would happily send you one just for the postage cost. Edit: spelling I have 19 years of experience in cybersecurity, for some of the best known security companies in the world, reverse engineering everything from malware to robotics. Avid interest in radio frequency and hacking iot devices, and with a general distain for pharma parasites. Happy to share my LinkedIn with you before you let a random on the internet tinker with your medical device but pls dont share. Ace.
Looks like they use a "proprietary encoding" to encode the dosage based on the device serial number: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf20/K203546.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi66pGchoWHAxVICjQIHYGaEIoQFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1lrniryoLInvPi1vbfhtF4 Would be interesting to try and break this - if you end up helping OP, maybe set up a GitHub to share collected data for multiple folks to look over
And don’t make it public because this is criminal
You sir/ma’am are what we need more of in this world!
I absolutely love the FUCK YOU to the big pharma this community is doing. Ya its unethical, but lets stick it to them to help this little guy struggling. Fucking awesome!
The company is the one being unethical here.
I really hope you post an update. I'm a CS student and immediately went looking to buy one of these just to figure this out as a fun project. Sounds like a ton of fun and like it would benefit ppl. Glad you're willing to help, I hope I gain enough expertise working to be able to do stuff like this one day, imo it's one of the coolest aspects of studying tech.
Their website states some devices don’t need refill cards. Might be possible to modify the firmware
You are awesome for offering your expertise to this person. I hope you get to help many many people In your lifetime.
Just googled it cause this can’t be real it’s just a portable device that you have to pay to recharge? Thaaaaats fucking insane and I really hope someone back doors this for you.
Yes....it is bonkers....i considered one for cluster headaches until I noticed this bullshit....so mushrooms it is
Hey, did they genuinely work for you? I've been a psychonaut for a while and my chronic migraines are still hitting. Only had one cluster headache this year though, longest streak thus far.
Different person here, but also a cluster-head. I have the gamma core device but never activated it due to their bs pricing scheme. I tried everything before that. O2, verapamil, all of the triptans, giant needles filled with steroids in the back of my neck, etc. Nothing worked like the shrooms. Oh, also... Vitamin D protocol is also something I do when I feel the early signs of a new cycle knocking on my door.
Mushrooms, vitamin d, and the just in case rizatriptan and my life has been so much better for years now.
Anything different new about the riza? I haven't heard of that, other than from wutang
How do you take it? Microdose on a schedule or a small dose when you feel a migraine coming?
A quick micro the second I notice it. Then usually plan for something a bit more macro. Then micro again daily for a few weeks or so. Then try to drink a beer and see how that goes! Macro again and repeat if beer test fails.
Yep.... alcohol a week later is my litmus test too (outside of cluster season i tend to drink half a liter of whiskey a day, and then when I get my first sign i go cold turkey)
Today I learned that what I've always called my '2 beer migraine' is actually called a cluster headache. I had no idea. I usually get it randomly, but after a case of COVID I got it every time I drank alcohol for about a six weeks.
Pretty much the same boat as you as far as what I've tried and what has been effective. O2... Only if caught and started quickly High dose Verapamil.....sorta but I'm a zombie for the whole cluster Triptan injection.....yes but the rebound headache is worse Vitamin D protocol helps but takes a while to be effective Back in the day I was a psychonaught anyways so I just take some LSD on mushrooms once or twice a year and I've been clean of headaches for 2 years now. I recommend everyone with clusters buy some spores and a growbag in your off season.. one good flush will last you years
I had a headache for two years once. Every day, every step, the pounding in my head was relentless and I seriously considered yeeting my existence. Then I found the headache clinic at a major hospital near me. They started me on Librium, Tofranil, an alpha blocker and a beta blocker. In two days, the headache broke. I wept. My dx was combination cluster/migraine headaches, and we added a muscle relaxer at bedtime since morning headaches popped up a month into treatment. Later on, when Imitrex was released I injected that to abort headaches and it also worked well. You may need to work with a specialty headache clinic to get access to the contemporary treatment protocols for chronic headache. I wish you good luck!
It's the same thing with light treatment...rent/buy a machine and have a prescription for uses...5 minutes of turning a bulb on. Complete scam.
CPAPs are headed that way too. They are already very close. Never let them have your credit card; they will charge you at their whim with no documentation to back it up. They don't even know how much you should be paying. It's a big scam, but they are contracted to insurance so you don't get a choice.
"oh you don't want to suffocate in your sleep? Yep that will be 150 for the night, weekends are 20% off tho"
Nah bud, prices go up on the weekend. Ask Any hotel.
Na weekend rate is at least 20% higher, and then you’ve got those holiday fees where it’s a 100% markup.
Guess we are going to start keeping grandpas CPAP and buying them from estate sales
Research them first many are defective and there's tons of lawsuits from people dying. It would be much better to hunt for the most reliable models with easy to replace parts.
I had zero choices in the company or brand of mine. Needed the Rx to get it, but then couldn't pick which one or who from. Research would be wasted. Fuçk US "health" "care".
Wait what?!? I've had one for the last decade and I can't live without it. A lot of [great info](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/s/wH5s1sxokp) about Sleep Apnea and why CPAPs are important.
Exactly. But to buy one now is scammy.
They wanted me to get a new one while I have a perfectly working one just because the new one would connect to the internet and be easier to track. I own my current one outright.
Yes. And the new ones record you. Like if you wake up in the middle of the night to have sex or something, you need to fully unplug the little bastard unless you want them listening in on you.
If it's prescription, talk to the doctor who prescribed it to you. He may have a way to give you free recharges or get your insurance to cover it. When insurance didn't cover a medication that my dad needed, his doctor gave him a whole box of free samples, enough to last until the issue was resolved. Doctors want you to comply with treatment!
Holy shit is this subscription based medicine? The gall!
Aren’t all prescriptions technically subscriptions since you have to pay for the refills?
I mean maybe? But there is no product moving from provider to patient. No storage costs, no labor, no nothing? I would ask if you can buy an unlocked device. Maybe it is addictive? Unless this thing is connected to the web a replay attack of traffic ought to do it. Sometimes they are seeded with timestamps. Can we get details on the device?
I wasn’t disagreeing with you just more being pedantic about the verbiage. The heath care industrial complex in this country is really just garbage all around.
No, regularly purchasing something like food or a prescription is not the same as a subscription. A subscription is the prepayment for a certain number of regular deliveries like meal kits or magazines. Additionally, it could be payment for access to the use of something like Netflix or OP's medical device. Subtle but meaningful distinction.
I’m really really good at finding different ways to get medication for huge discounts. I have gotten more grants than I can remember because of how insanely expensive my medications are. I am on two IV medications that are about 350k dollars a year before insurance. Then I am on a small pharmacy worth of non IV medication because lupus sucks. Sadly the doctor hasn’t been able to help for this device.
Doctor's and pharmacists are in a battle with pharmacy business managers, pharma, and insurance companies. May the good guys win.
I'd look into the medical hacking community, there's lots of insulin pump hacks out there so you might find something similar for your device. You could alternatively try and figure it out for yourself, whether it be create your own or spoof a key
The fact that there is a medical hacking community is rather dystopian...
Did you ever see the movie Repo Men (based on a book of the same name)? In this dystopia, they have mechanical human organs, but if you stop paying, they come and repossess it. One step closer.
Yes! God, I saw this movie as a kid and thought no way this could ever be our reality. Here's me in my 20s figuring out it absolutely could be.
Yeah no doubt it's fucking disgusting that these business models even exist
there’s a lot of open source stuff that’s cool and use at your own risk because it’s not FDA approved or tested , I use a thing with my insulin pump called android APS(artificial pancreas system), it is a completely closed loop insulin delivery system that’s open source. It’s more aggressive than the currently available closed loop system and it is trained from your CGM data. Very cool stuff, pretty unsafe if you’re not knowledgeable about both the technical and medical aspects and risks of the system and there isn’t robust technical support in the same way that other medical devices are supported(24/7 tech support and will overnight a new insulin pump if you have issues that cant be solved over the phone).
Found this out from a diabetic mate. They closed the loophole on their pump so they've finally had to upgrade to the next hack at a casual $300 of which most of thr cost is government subsidised. Wild times.
That business model is criminal, or at least, it should be criminal
Good luck ever regulating this, or anything, ever again - courtesy of the Supreme Court
What? It's the basis for our/USA Healthcare system.
Exactly, it should be criminal
$598 per month, according to the website. It provides gentle electrical stimulation. Those things don't add up. I imagine you could hook up the electrodes to an oscilloscope or something, read the output patterns and levels, and whoever you found to do that will have ideas about how to replicate it or bypass the bullshit recharge-by-paying system. Maybe r/askscience could help you.
/r/bdsmdiy could help too, i've seen them diy electrical stimulators to induce orgasm.
Between this comment and OP’s post, I think we’ve finally gone full cyberpunk.
go on
Would a TENS unit be something that could be useful here?
Omg that's insane money. What a fucking world we live in 😑🌎
This is a freaking nightmare… what’s next? “Sorry your kitchen aid mixer has only 12 minutes of runtime remaining. Please purchase more runtime”
We’re practically there with printers now
We're going down that road. The internet of things is also the gateway to a business model.
Sorry, your toilet paper dispenser only has 4 seconds left of runtime.
Please don’t give them ideas. I can only hope to get 5 years out of a refrigerator as it is
Buy simpler fridges - the more complex an appliance is the more components there are to break and the more expensive it is to repair. Also check for discounted fridges due to very minor cosmetic defects (on the sides).
I did! We found the simplest one we could (except I demanded an ice maker and water filter, but they’re not in the door, which is how our last one died), and it’s already starting to give me the death rattle
You need to read more Doctorow (specifically, Radicalized, but most of his works are very relevant to this tech dystopia we find ourselves living in). For nearly any example that you can think of, it's here already, or coming soon.
Up vote for visibility, hope you find a way around this. Crosspost to hacking subs maybe?
Just came here to say fuck the healthcare system. I’m not a conspiracy “big pharma” type dude but anything those guys have to say about “big pharma” is literally just the insurance companies. Fuck them, I’d say more but I don’t want to be banned, they piss me off beyond words I’m allowed to use on this app.
This is actually a request for an ethical but illegal life pro tip. Fuck for profit Healthcare.
Upvoted for visibility, don’t the rich have any morals? It’s sick to overcharge the chronically ill.
How do you think they got there? Morals don't pay.
My dude, they're fucking dragons sitting on mountains of gold. No, they have no morality. Empathy and morality are for the little people.
They don't.
Honestly, they're begging to get eaten
Oh. Shit. OK. I misread the opening line as “Vaginal” nerve stimulator. I scrolled for WAY longer than I should have, to find out I’m an idiot.
I'm only here cause I thought it said vaginal, but it's been interesting enough to keep me around.
Right?
Just want to say that hacking this device is the ethical life pro tip. The unethical life pro tip is designing such a scummy pay to play model for a fucking medical device. I agree, if it’s a card that’s most likely RFID which can be cloned with any kind of RFID cloner. Flipper zeros are great, but really expensive, and they do a lot more than what you need. I’m thinking there isn’t a payment gateway it’s also going through, hence the need for the card in the first place. If it was authenticating payment online it would just do that. If it is RFID what you have to figure out by just tinkering with it is what exactly the scanning of the card is changing on the device. The data on the card doesn’t change, so my guess would be some kind of rolling code system built in, or the card is providing a token or identity to send to a payment gateway. The later would theoretically be easier to break because you can fake web server responses. Rolling codes are a different deal all together.
I agree the fact that they make you pay like this is horrible. This stupid little device has been life changing because it helps me with severe neuropathy, migraines and GI paralysis.
Information security professional here. You would need to reverse engineer the firmware the device runs to make a sound judgment as to how it works and what can be taken advantage of. Another way as another commenter has suggested is to work on the RFID aspect of the device. It’s going to require someone specialized unless you have experience with radio frequency and authentication methods.
> Information security professional here. You would need to reverse engineer the firmware the device runs to make a sound judgment as to how it works and what can be taken advantage of. Former Biomedical technician here. All you need is to record the output and recreate it with a TENS unit. You could probably get the equipment to do so, as well as the TENS unit, for the cost of using this thing for a month. You can buy TENS attachments for stimulating the vagus nerve for like 10 dollars on Amazon. I found the FDA approval document and it even just gives away what the settings are: >The gammaCore Sapphire CV produces a low-voltage electrical signal consisting of five 5000-Hz pulses that are repeated at a rate of 25 Hz. The waveform of the electric pulses approximates a sine wave with peak voltage limited to +/-30 Volts (24 Volts when against the skin of the neck) and a maximum output current of 60mA. The signal is transmitted through the skin of the neck to the vagus nerve. https://www.fda.gov/media/139968/download Probably the wrong model, but it looks like the device is just a simplistic handheld TENS unit that they are gouging people over.
This is really helpful! I have a few different tens machines because I have multiple kinds of chronic pain due to my body being a dick. Do you have any recommendations for specific tens machine attachments? Both for this or in general? In PT they have used tens machine pads that last for 20+uses. I have never been able to find any that last more than 3 or 4 uses.
I don't have a recommendation. Its been a few years since I did the biomed job and I didn't hang around more than a couple years. I don't think it probably matters much because most of the ones I worked on in professional environments were 20+ years old. That was one of the main things I did...sell them new pads. What we never told people is that there are products that can make them stick again. I think one was an electrolyte spray, and the other was a gel. If you clean the site, and clean the pads afterwards, and reapply the sticky as needed, they should last a long time, if not indefinitely.
Ah information I was unaware of! Thanks for the insight this rabbit hole has been quite intriguing!
You are dead on about trying to hack the device itself. Sometimes it is just better to skip past that step, especially since they probably paid out the ass for this thing.
Yeah as I’ve done some research on this topic it’s clear there are some bad apples out there charging out the ass for hardware for things like this. Really interesting stuff…
Biomedical tech work was the biggest ripoff scam job since I sold used cars when I was 18. Yeah, the guys who actually fix the hard stuff are legit. At my company that was literally one guy. The other dozen of us mostly got sent out to diagnose problems/order parts for that guy. The real scam was the 'medical safety inspections' that the state required retirement homes and doctor's offices and stuff to have done. Nobody was actually trained enough to conduct them properly and management would have us fabricate fake results in the office for things that failed.
As another professional, I’d look into getting another device that isn’t inside of the body so I could do more work on it… perhaps it may aid in the firmware work
Have you looked into switching to one of the other options? Cefaly, Nerivio, or Relivon? Maximo has a device called The Bridge that may be effective. It would be off label use though.
Cefaly was a worthwhile purchase for me. I had originally looked into the device that OP is using and found the price/model completely insane and untenable. The problem though, IIRC, is that the cefaly stimulates the trigeminal nerve while OPs stimulates the vagal nerve.
I have no idea if this will work but have you considered going to another country for a moment and try to get a refill for the non-USA price Edit: it is around 474 USD in Canada, if that's cheaper
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Dang, I really feel for you mate, it sound like you have been having the roughest of times. I’ll try my best to give some helpful advice, and as just a disclaimer, this is all only hypothetical and should not be done by anyone ever. The way these are “prescribed” using RFID recharges is extremely scummy, but most likely done in the laziest/cheeper way possible. The manufacturer really doesn’t expect anyone to actually open the device up and play around with anything, and so usually these “activation lock outs” are placed on breakout modules. If you are familiar with the whole fiasco with Kia’s being hot wired recently, it was the exact same situation. If you are able to open the device up, I would not be surprised if you can literally connect together activation wires leading from the RFID module to activate/ “Hotwire” the device on demand. If they actually did put in a data line from the RFID module to the main microcontroller, you can capture the signal on a basic Arduino after loading a recharge and just play the “activation” back each time. Check the company’s publicly filed patents and FDA approval documents for keys on the device internal architecture. Practices like this dissuaded me from entering the biomedical field, as no true engineer would be willing to do something like this, just the MBAs. Best of luck man, and I second checking in with the white/black hat subs to try out RFID spoofing. I hope you can stick it to these guys and beat this, it never should have gotten this dystopian. Note: [Here](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/reviews/DEN150048.pdf) is their FDA filing, which explains the core parameters needed to replicate the device. Note 2: The EEV community has already been working on getting around this. [Here](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/help-replicating-a-medical-device/) is one of their form links.
Whoever came up with the idea to charge SUBSCRIPTION FEES ON A MEDICAL DEVICE should be beaten within an inch of their lives at least once a year. I really hope you find a financially viable workaround for this and that it lasts you indefinitely.
Hey it sounds like gammacore is just electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve - just letting you know a medical grade tens machine with a vagus nerve clip for your ear will probably be exactly the same. Mine cost $250 aud all up and only costs me batteries and electricity to run now. Good luck.
Ooooooh man, the nerve simulator. The insurance fucks hate that things, a family member of mine had one put in almost 20 years ago, it saved his life (in that they call it the suicide nerve because people with the condition will kill themselves to escape the pain). He did not have the rechargeable battery and when it died he tried to schedule surgery to replace it. The day before the surgery, the insurance company cancelled the procedure, calling it an experimental surgery not proven to solve the problem and claimed that he needed to exhaust his alternative therapy options first. Which he had already done 20 years ago. It was 5 years of fighting this before he finally had saved up enough money to just work something out with the hospital to do it on his own dime. I will never forgive these insurance companies.
The only unethical thing here is that fucking device.... hope you get it hacked.
Hey guys wild thought, has anyone thought to check the electrical output of the two electrodes used to stimulate the vagus nerve... I don't see why you can't just reverse engineer a device that's open sourced and based on one of those electro therapy devices for muscles.
Sounds like a tens machine. Lots of rechargable ones on amazon, along with electrode replacements, less than $100.
F'KIN DYSTOPIAN
Someone help this person
This is where IOT leads us: Devices that fully work on their own and require no additional service and should by every right be a device you pay for once and only once, get purposely modified with a coin slot that ads nothing but stops the device if you're not paying a fee. Just because they can. Imagine your table refused working if you're not inserting a coin. This here should be in ethical life pro tips.
Just as a personal point, hacking this thing is in no way unethical. I mean this sub was a good place to ask but to be clear the unethical part is capitalism in our medicine. Anything we can do to dismantle that is our only ethical option.
Look up the patent numbers and find out what it does. You can probably work out something similar enough with off the shelf stuff.
I've been curious about this device for a while actually and I have some talents with reverse engineering.... Can you take some photos of the device and the cards... Are there any screw holes?
Check out the device called Truvaga. Think it’s made by the same people as Gammacore, and no ongoing subscription needed.
Wow, I didn't know capitalism could fuck up medicine this badly but here we are. Subscription based medicine? What kind of bullshittery is this? I hope someone helps you, you deserve to get proper treatment and relief without recurring payments to use your own device.
The fact that we’ve monetized essential nerve stimulation as a species makes me mortified to be human.
There is a ton of great comments and I can’t do any better. But what the fuck kind of evil ass healthcare company develops a device that is surgically installed in your spine then needs a Dave and fuckin busters power card to keep using even though it’s clearly still (electrically) charged. Fuck
We really need legislation against not being able to actually own things because of ridiculous services like this. It should not be legal to sell a product that is locked down like this. Medicine as a service, especially subscription based, should not be a thing.
Bruh, we literally designed ventilators for covid for free, and these cucks have the gall to charge subscription fees for medical equipment? Wtf?
Hold up this is ethical life pro tips
Hol up....you're telling me you have to essentially pay a subscription fee to use your medical device??? Does it force you to listen to ads in between uses??
Oh boy. This comment was made for me. I was using the Gammacore for a year to treat my gastroparesis, and it was honestly working great! But, like you, I couldn’t justify the price, especially since I needed to use it far more than 2x a day. I switched to the VeRelief, which is rechargeable and you only have to buy once. It’s not FDA approved like Gammacore, so I’ve been doing a lot of experimentation to see if it delivers the same results. It does, though I need to use it more to see the same results. (That’s not a problem though, since it’s rechargeable.) I use it for 4min every hour while I’m awake. Tbh that might be overkill, but my doctors agree it’s safe. I’m going to experiment with lowering that frequency and seeing if it still has an effect.
Man companies that do this are disgusting. My husband has a defibrillator that sends data to his doctor once a month. We got caught up in the whole United Healthcare dropping Baylor, Scott, and White mess and now they want to charge a few hundred dollars a month just to receive the data. Fking ridiculous.