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It’s Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment

wired.com

11–20 of 65 posts

Re: It’s Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment

#11
How many of these devices are still running Windows XP?

Weak default passwords on the web interface is just the icing on the cake, the low-hanging fruit. The entire networking stack is likely to be riddled with unpatched vulnerabilities for anyone to exploit.

Relative obscurity and physical security are probably the only things that stand between hospital equipment and certain disaster.

Re: It’s Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment

#12
The thing with equipment like this is that security isn't a priority; "who would hack medical equipment?". A lack of high-profile cases where medical equipment was actively hacked is also not giving any incentive to fix these issues.

Worst case, these exploits will suddenly be used to disable or cripple hospitals in case of dirty wars and terrorist campaigns. If the latter is still a problem.

Re: It’s Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment

#13
To be a dash risk managementy about it;

(Risk of being hacked) x (severity of being hacked) (Risk of being hacked): Small.

(Severity of being hacked): Very negative, but localised most likely to a single machine, set of machines, or hospital.

(Risk of Software not Delivered): Pretty high if we go super-security. We are on a budget. There is competition. Who is paying for it?

(Severity of not delivered): Failure to cure at every hospital for every machine.

So, yes, there is a cost, but the benefit of ignoring security, for some sets of numbers on the above, could conceivably exceed it.

Re: It’s Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment

#14
In general the security on the equipment is because hideously high acquisition costs keeping most hobbyists out of fooling around with it. And most places with the equipment won't let somebody sit there and fool around with it. It's not quite security through obscurity, but more like security through expense.

Re: It’s Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment

#15

“Many hospitals are unaware of the high risk associated with these devices,” I assure you that while this is the hospital's official stance, many people within the hospital are well aware of the shoddy software on their medical devices and the risks they pose. There are so many opportunities for disruption of every aspect of the healthcare system (from the equipment itself, that this article addresses, to the electro…

I almost wonder what a completely reimagined vertically integrated health care system would look and cost like.

Re: It’s Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment

#16
post #9

Why was the title changed away from the original? This is getting too confusing. It used to read like the actual title: "It’s Insanely Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment"

Calm down, they just removed an adverb whose only function was to exaggerate.

What's the point of rules if you don't follow them? So what if some one feels "insanely" exagerates it. Its the journalists opinion that it is insanely easy. That should be the title. I don't care if an hn moderator feels it is insanely easy or just easy to hack a hospital.

IF he has an opinion on the difficulty to hack topic there is a comment section. The op is not a comment section for mods

Re: It’s Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment

#17
They also found surgery robots connected to internal networks. Although the robots generally have software firewalls to block connections to them, Erven and his team found that simply running an off-the-shelf vulnerability scanner against the firewall caused it to turn off and fail open.

Wow, just wow.

If someone ever hacks an active surgery robot it's going to be Saw meets Snow Crash, and not in a good way.

Re: It’s Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment

#18
post #15

“Many hospitals are unaware of the high risk associated with these devices,” I assure you that while this is the hospital's official stance, many people within the hospital are well aware of the shoddy software on their medical devices and the risks they pose. There are so many opportunities for disruption of every aspect of the healthcare system (from the equipment itself, that this article addresses, to the electro…

I almost wonder what a completely reimagined vertically integrated health care system would look and cost like.

Can you explain what you mean by "vertically integrated" in this context?

Re: It’s Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment

#20

“Many hospitals are unaware of the high risk associated with these devices,” I assure you that while this is the hospital's official stance, many people within the hospital are well aware of the shoddy software on their medical devices and the risks they pose. There are so many opportunities for disruption of every aspect of the healthcare system (from the equipment itself, that this article addresses, to the electro…

There's a market for disruption with some things, but it's mostly about doing more/better for less money. Security isn't really what most people are interested in paying for in many cases.
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