Quick Challenge
List other major Ransomware attacks you can find and note down similarities.
MEDICAL IoT DEVICES
If cybersecurity is not stressed enough in the healthcare industry with IoT medical devices, then
it does not only threaten IT systems of the hospitals but more importantly, it can inflict damage
on a patient’s health.
Medical IoT devices like drug administration devices, monitoring devices, glucometers,
defibrillators, infusion pumps, blood pressure management devices, and cardiac pacemakers
have helped to improve the quality of health services to a large extent. However, it is important
to note that these IoT devices can also be hacked. Experts believe that such vulnerability can
lead to an injury or even death of a patient.
Traditional IoT attacks are often known to result in being exploited for either a botnet or
they are utilized to hack the other parts of the IT infrastructure.
However, for medical IoT devices, there are additional reasons as well. For instance,
connected patient systems can contain healthcare history and personal information of patients,
both of which can help cyber criminals to engage in illegal acts. By hacking medical IoT devices,
hackers can misuse information like SSNs from the medical records. Hence, the breach of
medical IoT devices allows them to engage in thefts like credit card fraud and identity theft.
Insulin Pump Demonstration
Diabetic patients commonly use insulin pumps to control their sugar intake. They add insulin
(secreted by the pancreas) in the bodies of the patients. If the insulin touches extremely lower
levels, people struggle with hyperglycemia, a health condition in which patients have to deal
with extreme levels of blood sugar. If the levels of insulin reach too high, then they battle hypo-
glycemia where they may even face death in the worst case scenarios.
In 2011, an attack was carried out at insulin pumps as a demonstration by Medtronic, a
company which sells medical devices. At that time, a cybersecurity analyst experimented with
insulin pumps and successfully modified its dosages to increase the number of doses for diabetic
patients, therefore posing high risks to their health.
The insulin pumps consisted of small radio transmitters which helped the doctors and
patients in updating dierent types of functions. The researcher improved on a technique (for
that time) through which any cybercriminal could control IoT medical devices as long as they
were near the device and were aware of the insulin pump’s serial number. The researcher, Barnaby
Jack, designed a special type of antenna which assisted him to identify and take the full charge
of IoT medical devices without having the serial number of the device. This means all he needed
to do was to place him within the 300 feet of the IoT medical device and use it as per his wishes
Jack explained that he was successful with the infiltration to such an extent that he was able to
run all the required commands with the device. Moreover, he stated that he could manipulate the
medical device to ensure that the entire monthly insulin dosage could be applied in a singleday.
280 Internet of Things
Internet_of_Things_CH11_pp271-308.indd 280 9/3/2019 10:16:20 AM
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