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McAfee Claims Successful Insulin Pump Attack
judgecorp writes "Intel security subsidiary McAfee has claimed a successful wireless attack on insulin pumps that diabetics rely on to control blood sugar. While previous attempts to attack insulin pumps have met with mixed success, McAfee's Barnaby Jack says he has persuaded an insulin pump to deliver 45 days worth of insulin in one go, without triggering the pump's vibrating alert safety feature. All security experts still say that surgical implants are a benefit overall."
I'm not one to believe this sort of conspiracy theory
Says 'the eric conspiracy'.
Sometimes it is best to post as AC.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What special sort of sicko would do this for kicks?
Seriously? You have to ask?
Not for kicks, but lulz.
I know it's naïve to even ask, but would this be used in the wild? What special sort of sicko would do this for kicks?
The Darzhavna Sigurnost (Bulgarian Secret Police) and the KGB killed Georgi Markov on a bridge in London by stabbing him in the back with an umbrella that fired a ricin filled pellet. The ability to assassinate someone by infecting their insulin pump would be a goldmine.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
So what?
If someone throws a rock into your windshield, you die. We still drive cars.
Hell, if someone sticks a knife into you, you die. Everyone uses knives.
If someone wants you dead, there are a miriad ways to do it. The problem is not with those attack vectors, but with the fact, that someone is after your life.
This is not a 'security breach', is is murder. And it takes a murderer to do it.
This is just another case of 'same old, but now on the intertubes/with a computer!!'.
An insulin pump is NOT implanted inside the user's body, and it is NOT a medical implant. A small, disposable cannula attached to the pump via plastic tubing is inserted by the user under the skin just a few mm, and is exchanged by the user every few days. There is no permanently inserted component to an insulin pump.
Also, pump's cartridges to hold insulin typically range from 200-300 units. Contrary to the article's claims, this is not 45 days worth! Someone who is not insulin resistant using a 200 unit model would get 6, 7 days out of it tops. People who use the bigger ones because they are very insulin resistant might use 300 units in just a couple of days.
The BBC article also states "Mr Jack said diabetics typically needed a dose of 5-10 units of insulin after a heavy meal to help regulate blood sugar. Making the device empty its cartridge into a host's bloodstream would cause "deep trouble"."
This is very flawed as well. Typically, insulin is taken before a meal whenever possible, and how "heavy" the meal is, is irrelevant. What matters is the user's insulin to carb ratio (how much insulin they need to properly use a gram of carbs) and how many carbs the item they eat contains. Some people require a very large amount of insulin for very small amounts of carbs, some people require barely any insulin for a large amount. Also, when a person relies on an insulin pump, they're not just adding insulin to their body during mealtimes, the vast majority will be using it to deliver a "basal" dose of insulin, or a small amount of insulin 24/7 to stay alive (as this is a function normal non-diabetic bodies perform.) They also use it to deliver corrections, or small doses of insulin in response to blood glucose levels that are higher than expected after meals or throughout the day. A pump is not just a device you use after a "heavy meal."
While it is true that an insulin cartridge unwillingly emptied into a patient poses significant danger, even without an alarm, I suspect 99% of people would be able to quickly notice such a large dose of insulin being delivered. You can see and feel insulin being delivered that rapidly. And if they happened to miss it, that's what frequent monitoring of blood glucose (which is required for all insulin pump users) is for. Sure, taking 200-300 units more than you should have would be a world of suck, but if you had access to food to eat or a sweet drink or glucose tablets, it's very likely an experienced diabetic would survive that sort of incident... to say nothing of if the cartridge wasn't full. But that's all assuming we're taking someone who has clearly made several mistakes in their reasoning for their word when they say they can access these devices.
If more security were implemented in an insulin pump, there would certainly be no "frequent surgeries to replace the batteries," as the battery is (like the entire pump) stored in an external pump. It would involve the manufacturer mailing you a replacement and you switching it out.
Who needs a high-value target when you could hold any diabetic hostage for ransom? All it takes is a vulnerable wireless router with a sufficiently flexible transmitter, and the ability to scan for a nearby victim. Barring the implacable reality of device incompatibility, this is scary stuff.
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Yeah but a lot of the time people don't kill other people because of the evidence trail, or just sheer inconvenience of it. If it was as easy as hitting a "run" button on your smartphone, people might not be so hesitant. The fear of being caught keeps a lot of people honest and if people didn't have that fear, how honest would people really be in today's society? I doubt that i'd have the restraint at, say, a westboro protest or a teaparty rally.
I got here through a series of tubes
There are different kinds of pumps. The most common is the type you describe, but there are in fact implantable insulin pumps which get refilled via syringe, and this is the type described in the article:
"The pumps hold 300 units of insulin, enough for about 45 days, and are refilled by a syringe."
Try essentially impossible to investigate. How many people do you walk within twenty feet of in any given week? Any given year? Now imagine that any one of those people might have been the person who injected code that waits a predetermined period of time, does something bad, and then erases the location where the time delay is stored so that the original value cannot be recovered after the fact.... Or worse, overwrites the time delay with a value that implicates someone else.
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