Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Mount Cyberattacks Against Surgery Robot
An anonymous reader writes: A group of researchers from University of Washington have tested the security of a teleoperated robotic surgery system created by their colleagues, and have found it severely lacking. "Teleoperated surgical robots will be expected to use a combination of existing publicly available networks and temporary ad-hoc wireless and satellite networks to send video, audio and other sensory information between surgeons and remote robots. It is envisioned these systems will be used to provide immediate medical relief in under-developed rural terrains, areas of natural and human-caused disasters, and in battlefield scenarios," the researchers noted, and asked: "But what if these robotic systems are attacked and compromised?"
You can't completely prevent your communication going down due to malice, accident, or acts of nature. When those fail you have to have a backup plan such as going into a failsafe mode.
BUT You can and must detect interference and either correct for it or treat it like a total communications failure. There is no excuse for being fooled into taking instructions from an unauthorized party (well, unless the instruction is "you think I'm hacking your communications but I'm really doing a side-channel attack to trick you into doing what you normally do when you lose communications, now obey me and do what you normally do when your communications are hosed, thank you.").
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Which is worse for a patient with a condition that is typically not fatal and for which on-site surgery has a known risk of fatality:
* Sorry, you'll have to wait for a doctor who may never come
* We'll give you remote surgery but there's a chance someone will hack the system in a way that could kill you, plus there is still the normal risk you will never wake up from the anesthesia
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes. The entire thesis of the researchers is more than a little bizzare:
A crucial bottleneck that prevents life-saving surgery being performed in many parts of the world is the lack of trained surgeons. One way to get around this is to make better use of the ones that are available.
No, these machines are going to be used in 'first world' situations in order to help surgeons perform difficult tasks. The idea that someone is going to send a highly complex robot out into the total boonies is pretty far fetched. Surgery is much more than the surgeon. It's the scrub and circulator nurses. It is the sterile OR and equipment. It is anesthesia and pre op and post op nursing. This machine will do little to help with the lack of care.
Now, having a poorly secured surgical robot anywhere isn't such a bright idea and it is likely that the manufacturers need to work on this, but surgery robots are in their infancy at present.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Sure - but the implications of the robot going "dead" halfway through a surgery are much less severe than someone suddenly hijacking the signal and switching to "blender mode". A dead 'bot is still a problem, but you probably have on-site staff capable of at least attempting to stabilize the patient.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.