IMDGuard: Securing implantable medical devices with the external wearable guardian

Xu, Fengyuan; Qin, Zhengrui; Tan, Chiu C.; Wang, Baosheng; Li, Qun

doi:10.1109/infcom.2011.5934987

Cited by 209 publications

(202 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…A fair comparison between this and our other experiments -which employ a 20-FPS camera -requires that the individual IPI bits represent a similar frequency content. To this end, we first halve the IPI values obtained using our 50 FPS experiment prior to calculating the BER, effectively representing the BER values as-if they were obtained using a 25 FPS camera 6 . Note that the BER is considerably lower than when a 20 FPS camera is used, i.e., a higher camera-frame rate can increase the accuracy of rPPG.…”

Section: B Experimental Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attacks on Heartbeat-Based Security Using Remote Photoplethysmography

Seepers

Wang

Haan

et al. 2018

IEEE J. Biomed. Health Inform.

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Attacks on heartbeat-based security using remote photoplethysmographySeepers, R.M.; Wang, W.; de Haan, G.; Sourdis, I.; Strydis, C. • A submitted manuscript is the author's version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website.• The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review.• The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers. Link to publication General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.• You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Abstract-The time interval between consecutive heartbeats (interpulse interval, IPI) has previously been suggested for securing mobile-health (mHealth) solutions. This time interval is known to contain a degree of randomness, permitting the generation of a time-and person-specific identifier. It is commonly assumed that only devices trusted by a person can make physical contact with him/her, and that this physical contact allows each device to generate a similar identifier based on its own cardiac recordings. Under these conditions, the identifiers generated by different trusted devices can facilitate secure authentication. Recently, a wide range of techniques have been proposed for measuring heartbeats remotely, a prominent example of which is remote photoplethysmography (rPPG). These techniques may pose a significant threat to heartbeat-based security, as an adversary may pretend being a trusted device by generating a similar identifier without physical contact, thus bypassing one of the core security conditions. In this paper, we assess the feasibility of such remote attacks using state-of-the-art rPPG methods. Our evaluation shows that rPPG has similar accuracy as contact PPG and, thus, forms a substantial threat to heartbeat-based-security systems that permit trusted devices to obtain their identifiers from contact PPG recordings. Conversely, rPPG ca...

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Section: B Experimental Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attacks on Heartbeat-Based Security Using Remote Photoplethysmography

Seepers

Wang

Haan

et al. 2018

IEEE J. Biomed. Health Inform.

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“…To reduce battery consumption in IMDs, methods have been suggested that use an external device (called a cloaker) [17][18][19]. A cloaker is a device, such as a smartphone, that operates on behalf of the IMD.…”

Section: Communication Cloakingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy-Aware Key Exchange for Securing Implantable Medical Devices

Choi

Lee

et al. 2018

Security and Communication Networks

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Implantable medical devices (IMDs) continuously monitor the condition of a patient and directly apply treatments if considered necessary. Because IMDs are highly effective for patients who frequently visit hospitals (e.g., because of chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease), their use is increasing significantly. However, related security concerns have also come to the fore. It has been demonstrated that IMDs can be hacked-the IMD power can be turned off remotely, and abnormally large doses of drugs can be injected into the body. Thus, IMDs may ultimately threaten a patient's life. In this paper, we propose an energy-aware key exchange protocol for securing IMDs. We utilize synchronous interpulse intervals (IPIs) as the source of a secret key. These IPIs enable IMDs to agree upon a secret key with an external programmer in an authenticated and transparent manner without any key material being exposed either before distribution or during initialization. We demonstrate that it is difficult for adversaries to guess the keys established using our method. In addition, we show that the reduced communication overhead of our method enhances battery life, making the proposed approach more energy-efficient than previous methods.

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“…Tippenhauer et al demonstrated that the shield does not provide confidentiality as a MIMO eavesdropper could cancel out the interference produced by the shield and then recover the messages sent by the devices [21]. Xu et al introduced a wearable device, also known as "IMDGuard", which does not only work as a proxy but also performs an authentication process on the ICD's behalf [22]. But Rostami et al found that the "IMDGuard" is vulnerable to a Man-InThe-Middle (MITM) attack which reduces its effective key length from 129 bits to 86 bits [19].…”

Section: Countermeasuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the (in)security of the latest generation implantable cardiac defibrillators and how to secure them

Marin

Singelée

Garcia

et al. 2016

Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference on Computer Security Applications

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Implantable Medical Devices (IMDs) typically use proprietary protocols with no or limited security to wirelessly communicate with a device programmer. These protocols enable doctors to carry out critical functions, such as changing the IMD's therapy or collecting telemetry data, without having to perform surgery on the patient. In this paper, we fully reverse-engineer the proprietary communication protocol between a device programmer and the latest generation of a widely used Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) which communicate over a long-range RF channel (from two to five meters). For this we follow a black-box reverse-engineering approach and use inexpensive Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) equipment. We demonstrate that reverse-engineering is feasible by a weak adversary who has limited resources and capabilities without physical access to the devices. Our analysis of the proprietary protocol results in the identification of several protocol and implementation weaknesses. Unlike previous studies, which found no security measures, this article discovers the first known attempt to obfuscate the data that is transmitted over the air. Furthermore, we conduct privacy and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks and give evidence of other attacks that can compromise the patient's safety. All these attacks can be performed without needing to be in close proximity to the patient. We validate that our findings apply to (at least) 10 types of ICDs that are currently on the market. Finally, we propose several practical short-and long-term countermeasures to mitigate or prevent existing vulnerabilities.

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IMDGuard: Securing implantable medical devices with the external wearable guardian

Cited by 209 publications

References 14 publications

Attacks on Heartbeat-Based Security Using Remote Photoplethysmography

Attacks on Heartbeat-Based Security Using Remote Photoplethysmography

Energy-Aware Key Exchange for Securing Implantable Medical Devices

On the (in)security of the latest generation implantable cardiac defibrillators and how to secure them

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