Slashdot Mirror
Hospital Equipment Infected With Conficker
nandemoari writes "Recently, the Conficker/Downadup worm infected several hundred machines and critical medical equipment in an undisclosed number of US hospitals.
The attacks were not widespread; however, Marcus Sachs, director of the SANS Internet Storm Center, told CNET News that it raises the awareness of what we would do if there were millions of computers infected in hospitals or in critical infrastructure locations.
It's not clear how the devices (including heart monitors, MRI machines and PCs) got infected. Infected computers were running Windows NT and Windows 2000 in a local area network (LAN) that wasn't supposed to be Internet accessible, but the LAN was connected to one with direct Internet access.
A patch was released by Microsoft last October that fixes the problem, but the computers infected were reportedly too old to be patched."
Newer isn't always better.
Why risk having security vulnerabilities on a tried and tested mission-critical system? They should have gone with Linux or BSD from the start and had virtually guaranteed upgrade compatibility from that point on, with plenty of commercial support options.
Sam ty sig.
1) Vendors of these devices almost across the board disallow local IT admins to put any windows patches on the machines
- this is due to FDA requirements for approval, and the vendor is "covering" themselves
- also, they usually have a list of "qualified updates" that is usually MONTHS behind MS's patch cycle (not surprising given the sheer number and speed of holes that are found)
- usually the vendors claim that THEY will apply patches regularly, in practice, they almost NEVER do
2) Vendors typically disallow these machines to be on the active directory
- this is because they can't stand troubleshooting/supporting issues in their software due to GPO's being pushed down, software management software, etc etc
3) To everyone screaming how idiotic it is that medical devices have Windows on them: you may be a geek, but have clearly never worked in a real enterprise environment. Windows is embedded on so many devices in the world (medical and otherwise) that you would never even know existed. Why? Because it's widely supported, has huge hardware support, and is surprisingly OPEN to developers to hack it into whatever they need it to be. And windows programmers are a dime a dozen.
4) To everyone screaming how idiotic it is that medical devices are connected to the internet getting infected - Do you even know how Conficker spreads? It spreads quite easily across a LAN, attaching to Windows file shares. See MS08-067 for more info. Many of these devices are on a LAN with no DNS (although plenty are on the 'net). Why? Again, because vendors insist that they be connected so they can VPN in and support them (often using LogMeIn, Webex etc).
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
Medical equipment has a very long lifespan. Many devices for measurement and monitoring are used for 10 to 20 years before replacement. The general policy is "if it works, don't fix it and, more important, do not touch it". The real problem is that most suppliers of equipment are reluctant to support any type of patches. Many of the suppliers explicitly state that the machines may not be changed in any way (and that includes patching the OS) or you will lose all guarantee and support.
Doesn't Microsoft itself say (perhaps in the EULA disclaimer) that its operating systems were not intended to be used in this sort of mission-critical capacity? That could of course have a very narrow definition, something along the lines of "don't ever use it to operate that iron lung but maybe use it so the receptionist can run MS Office" but if that were the case, then this would be a mere nuisance and not such a real problem. That is, in that case there'd be nothing special about the fact that the affected institution happened to be a hospital beyond the fact that it sounds bad. Because of that, I really get the impression that they were using the wrong tool for the job.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The biggest issue here is that Medical Equipment has to be run through an FDA Validation process. If you make changes to the system, you have to revalidate, and Validation takes months and $100K's. So the vendors leave them as-is.
What's frustrating is that these systems need to be on a LAN, since they need to report their results to other clinical systems. So these small islands need to be linked other islands, and eventually, someone screws up and links an island with an Internet connection . . . .
Because the network admin should have the laboratory equipment firewalled off with a "deny all" preceded and followed by comment lines that read " # DANGER -- MEDICAL EQUIPMENT ON THIS SEGMENT -- If you permit so much as one stinking port to pass through this firewall, I will hunt you down and leave nothing behind for the doctors to patch together."
There is no excuse on the planet for letting health care equipment see the cloud. If data has to enter or leave, it should pass through a bastion host. If the requirements are that the equipment really has to reach the internet, the requirements are faulty.
John
I have to agree. You think a car maker gives a crap about the cost of a repair job down the line? I know several engineers personally that work in the auto industry. Their priorities go something like this:
1. Meet bare minimum, required by law emissions, safety, and quality standards.
2. Be as cheap to make as possible
3. Be as cheap to assemble as possible
4. Require the minimum retooling for factories making it.
5. Require minimum retraining for workers assembling it.
6. When it fails (and it will) make sure it doesn't make the car catch on fire, or slam on the gas, or lose the ability to brake, or otherwise hurt/maim/kill the driver (lawsuits cost money).
7. Make it implement some sort buzzword marketing tech that doesn't do much but sells cars.
8. Make it implement some tech that actually improves the car in a way that sells more cars.
9. Make it look cool.
10. Be durable enough to last past the warranty in 99% of vehicles, and not blatantly defective enough to force a recall/inspire a class action lawsuit.
11. Be servicable.
Notice thats a long list of conflicting goals, and how easy it is to service is on the bottom. Few people even look at the (estimated) total cost of ownership of a car, much less personally inspect how easy it looks to surface. And since systemic, hard to service problems tend to show up 5 years down the line, when the engineers responsible have long ago moved on to other projects, and that particular model has already been replaced anyways, noone really cares.
The idea that some sort of sneaky conspiracy of planned obsolescence is going on is bogus. The reality is the engineers and designers have different priorities. Replacement parts are often expensive because the machines required to make them are expensive, and they want to retool them to make something else as soon as possible, so they often make a bunch of extras and shove them in a warehouse somewhere. If those run out, and they have to make more, it means they have to spend a ton of money to make another run of them.
When people are buying cars, they want the latest and greatest. A car made using the tried and tested tech from 10 years ago would last longer, and be more reliable, but would offer less performance,comfort, and safety for pretty much the same price or more.