Medical system security does not seem very good. When I was operating in the area a while back, one comment I kept seeing was similar to yours. "Yes, the security is bad, but the good these devices do outweighs the bad."
I agree with that, but my follow-up has always been, why can't these devices continue to help patients, but in a secure way? The manufacturers really don't want to spend the money to try and have some form of a security posture?
Rhetorical question. At the end of the day, my pessimistic view is that nothing will happen until some firm finally proves that there has been a high profile attack, there is an ensuing media firestorm, and the regulation process starts happening.
I believe the best compromise would require forward thinking leadership and design. Make medical devices that must or would be served by communication and control short range by design. Ideally it could be turned off by the patient but close range enough that a doctor can access it while the patient is in no position to assist. The added danger is minimal given that anyone that close who wanted them dead could just murder them in other ways.
Have a centralized registry of valid public keys - there are debates about who should have one but that is a whole other topic. The point being that nonrepudiation - an audit trail will be left which means in cases of malfeasance the entity corresponding is the one responsible - either directly or by letting their key get compromised. The practical pain is the logistics of course.
I speculate the truth is benign; security isn't a top feature for many development shops.
my guess is that they are subject to the usual security vs convenience trade off, that more security means more time and money spent gaining access to the devices for legitimate actors (e.g. nurses) which means some additional patient lives will be damaged or even lost.
of course, that may be well justified depending on how much dangerous or malicious hacking there is
There is always a time before a vulnerable system gets hacked, and there is always a person doing the hacking. Maybe this article on HN, some tweet, or some other comment on the internet will prompt someone to break into a IOT medical device and cause harm to someone. Who knows when it will happen.
That said, I wouldn't understand the rationale behind someone who knowingly hacks a medical system for malicious intent. What honor is there in turning off someone's pacemaker? That just seems like murder but with a technological twist.
Would they every use this? It is an act of war, and they risk the replacement leader being "worse". However it is something they would like to have. Of course once someone starts using this all medical device makers will have to take security seriously, which enters an arms race.
The only protection most people have is we are not important enough to target. However if you are a world leader of some sort you are always at risk that some other country will decide the best way to deal with you is kill you. Vulnerabilities in your medical devices is just one possible choice such nations have.
Then again there are lots of other choices for murder. Poison has been used going back thousands of years has the useful property that you can make it look like an ex did it thus avoiding war.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/business/dealbook/hedge-f...
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Somebody may do this but with current devices it would be difficult to do this on large scale. Usually you need some level of proximity.
Moral implications aside, I can see a reason to explore that idea ;-)
Fascinating. I'm going to avoid going off-topic any further, though.
Think of it this way--any life-critical machine should have at least some consideration payed to security during design. Even non life-critical machines need security, so is it acceptable when we entirely ignore it in the whole field of medicine? If we leave it that that way, then yes, be utterly certain that it will be exploited somewhere by somebody. All information security paranoia is proven correct on a long enough timeline.
Ask any infosec professional--does _____ system really need security? The answer is going to be yes, regardless of what's in the blank. We've learned this many times with many devices which we used to think nobody would ever bother to tamper with or that couldn't be made to do anyone harm. Every time our hubris brightly illustrated and we finally realize that yes, every networked device has the potential to be crucial to somebody and it all needs at least some consideration toward security.