Securing legacy mobile medical devices

Abstract

Millions of people use mobile medical devices-more every day. But our understanding of device security and privacy for such devices is incomplete. Man-in-the-middle attacks can be performed on typical Bluetooth-enabled mobile medical devices, compromising the privacy and safety of patients. In response, we developed the Personal Security Device, a portable device to improve security for mobile medical systems. This device requires no changes to either the medical device or its monitoring software, and offers protection for millions of existing devices. We evaluate our defense mechanism to show that it adds insignificant overhead and analyze its robustness against various attacks. © Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2013.