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Medicine Security Software Technology

Hack Causes Pacemakers To Deliver Life-Threatening Shocks (arstechnica.com) 72

Posted by BeauHD from the patient-safety dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Life-saving pacemakers manufactured by Medtronic don't rely on encryption to safeguard firmware updates, a failing that makes it possible for hackers to remotely install malicious wares that threaten patients' lives, security researchers said Thursday. At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, researchers Billy Rios and Jonathan Butts said they first alerted medical device maker Medtronic to the hacking vulnerabilities in January 2017. So far, they said, the proof-of-concept attacks they developed still work. The duo on Thursday demonstrated one hack that compromised a CareLink 2090 programmer, a device doctors use to control pacemakers after they're implanted in patients. Because updates for the programmer aren't delivered over an encrypted HTTPS connection and firmware isn't digitally signed, the researchers were able to force it to run malicious firmware that would be hard for most doctors to detect. From there, the researchers said, the compromised machine could cause implanted pacemakers to make life-threatening changes in therapies, such as increasing the number of shocks delivered to patients. Rios and Butts were also able to use a $200 HackRF software-defined radio to hack a Medtronic-made insulin pump and make it withhold a scheduled dose of insulin. Medtronic has released a page that lists all the security advisories they have issued on the pacemakers and insulin pumps.
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Hack Causes Pacemakers To Deliver Life-Threatening Shocks More

Hack Causes Pacemakers To Deliver Life-Threatening Shocks

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  • And the hackers go to jail now, right?
    • or the designer who left that feature (as in authentication) out?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

        And the hackers go to jail now, right?

        or the designer who left that feature (as in authentication) out?

        You apparently haven't been following the news lately. White hats go to jail for disclosing blatant security holes but the designers are fine.

  • Jesus it shouldnt need firmware updates (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09, 2018 @05:40PM (#57098910)

    It's not a gizmo no one cares about, all the products in the 80/90s had plenty of testing before shipping with just one firmware that wasn't updateable. These updates make manufacturers lazy and sometimes they push out something worse than the one that preceded it.

    No updates, much less need for security. I don't want stuff in me to use the internet in any fashion.

    • ...I don't know about you but if I had a pacemaker i'd want it updated...by the way it's rf not the internet...
    • There are a lot of good reasons to have these devices connect remotely for firmware updates. For instance, the ability to recognize arrhythmia using signal detection has improved dramatically in the last 5-10 years. For defibrillators, that can be the difference between appropriate and inappropriate shocks where the machine misreads the rhythm. Same is true with pacing and other treatments for a pacemaker. I have a device like this, so I've read a lot about these hacks. I have a device from a different man

    • A lot of them shouldn't even need firmware. When you go to a hospital, you may get a choice between a traditional drip, dosage measured via drip rate, and the computerised equivalent, with 85 levels of menus, some with hundreds of entries, a 640 x 480 display filled with the programmers showing off how much crap they can cram into a 640 x 480 display, dozens of options and parameters to get wrong, beeps and bongs all night long, graphics and animations and a hidden flight simulator and a Tetris game as an

  • the film Dead in a Heartbeat

  • No remote access (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    In addition to using signed binaries, run a pair of wires to just beneath my skin.

    If it ever needs reprogramming, make a small incision and wire me up for the upgrade.

    Save the wireless things for less-consequencial things like reading the device's status. Even then, figure our some way to prevent an adversary from reading it unless he is rught up next to me for an extended period of time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      make a small incision and wire me up for the upgrade.

      Wire you up to what? A programmer that has been compromised?

      Your TV set has better end-to-end security to ensure unauthorized Mickey Mouse movies aren't being viewed on unapproved hardware.

  • A complicated way of committing murder (Score:4, Informative)

    by GuB-42 ( 2483988 ) on Thursday August 09, 2018 @06:14PM (#57099096)

    Sure, you can hack a pacemaker and kill its wearer. You can also shoot him with a gun, poison him, bomb him, whatever. It is made even easier by the fact that people who wear pacemakers aren't usually at the peak of their shape.

    But like they say in obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com], most people aren't murderers.

    • You are right.

      Somebody is going to hack into the programming device in some doctor's office. Wait for the device to get turned on to update it's firmware, perform a man in the middle attack to load the firmware of the hacker's choice, which is designed to change the parameters of a specific pacemaker device in ways which will kill the patient, not right away, but later, say when the target is asleep.

      I'm thinking that if death of a target is your goal, there might be easier ways..

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by novakyu ( 636495 )

        You are right that this is useless if simple death of a target is your goal.

        OTOH, if you want to commit murder in a way that is hard to trace back to you, short of having a Death Note, this might be the next "best" thing.

    • But like they say in obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com], most people aren't murderers.

      Most people aren’t swatters, either - but unfortunately a few think it’s funny. And those sorts of people seemed to be wired not to blame themselves when their “prank” goes very wrong [kansas.com].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dasunt ( 249686 )

      But like they say in obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com], most people aren't murderers.

      Here's why this line of reasoning fails:

      All it takes is one individual who will threaten to kill pacemaker users unless they get ONE MILLION DOLLARS *raises pinky to mouth*

      Is the threat real? Who knows? Probably just some guy in Romania making idle threats. Can a major company risk it?

      What happens if the scammer realizes that people with pacemakers tend to die anyways, and publicizes a threat to kill one random person with

    • Say you are the US and want to kill Putin/Castro/insert boogey man of your choice. There is a risk of nuclear war if detected. Do you : 1) do make a plain sniper murder or do you 2) hack the re-programmer for the pace maker so that if it detects a specific patient it change the therapy to be deadly ,e.g. fail to deliver shock or do it at an irregular rate, but report to forensic the correct rate ? Same thing for any group XYZ wanting to murder somebody ABC but wanting to avoid the consequence IJK associated

  • As the main cheerleader for US waterboarding, I've wondered how a motivated individual might subject him (Cheney) to a similarly terrifying and helplessness inducing experience.

    Tweaking his pacemaker up & down through it's full range of speeds...with occasional stops & restarts might just do the trick! Just imagine how exciting it would be to discover your heart racing at 180 BPM for no apparent reason...then dropping off to an almost unconsious 20 BPM...now back up to 180 for a bit... Perhaps alm

  • pony up 50 000$ or get shocked every 2 minutes!

  • The VP was right with his concerns when he got one. Damn.

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