A security researcher reveals that he was able to see detailed messages from hospitals as the coronavirus outbreak got worse in California.

But Troy Brown, a security researcher, said at his presentation at Defcon's Internet-of-Things village that the messages didn't stay private.

Brown was able to see it all, including personal details about patients, like patient names and their COVID-19 status, as well as how often patients were transferred from the coronavirus wing to the morgue. .

"Those unencrypted pager messages include a lot of COVID information," Brown said.

Once he started eavesdropping, Brown saw a flood of information about COVID-19 from hospitals, including the types of requests patients were making.

He saw sensitive information including patients' name, gender, age, diagnosis, COVID-19 status, what treatment they were getting, as well as the hospital's PPE supply status and inventory of beds and ventilators. .

The pager messages listed out several sensitive details of patients in hospitals

For that very reason, lawmakers have called for privacy protections for coronavirus treatment, and Brown's research shows that hospitals are still leaking information in a very simple way.