Cyber-attacks on medical implants: A case study of cardiac pacemaker vulnerability

Abstract

This paper describes the vulnerability of the medical implants due to cyber-attacks, which can result in unexpected behavior of these devices thus causing severe damage to human safety. Although, it seems hard to believe that someone's implantable medical device (IMD), e.g. pacemaker or insulin pump can be hacked by an eavesdropper, in reality, researchers have demonstrated that these embedded medical devices can turn into assassination weapons by modifying the operation through remote access. It is therefore important to address these issues to ensure safety and security in medical cyber physical systems. Model based control is implemented in MATLAB/Simulink to demonstrate the control of pacemaker device. Moreover, certain attack models are used to visualize the effects of cyber-attacks on cardiac pacemaker.