Communications of the ACM
Electric Therapy For Medical-Device Malware
The WattsUpDoc system watches for subtle changes in power consumption by medical devices as a clue to their infection by malware.
Credit: Warner Bros.
University of Michigan researchers have developed WattsUpDoc, a system designed to catch malware on medical devices by noting subtle changes in their power consumption.
The researchers say the technology could give hospitals a quick way to identify equipment with dangerous vulnerabilities. They note it also could be applied to computer workstations used in industrial control settings.
Hospital devices such as pregnancy monitors, compounders, and storage systems for MRI machines are vulnerable to hackers because they are usually connected to an internal network that is connected to the Internet.
The researchers tested WattsUpDoc on an industrial-control workstation and on a compounder, which is used to mix drugs. The malware detector first learned the devices' normal power-consumption patterns. Then it tested machines that had been intentionally infected with malware. The system was able to detect abnormal activity more than 94 percent of the time when it had been trained to recognize the malware, and up to 91 percent of the time with previously unknown malware.
The researchers say the technology could alert hospital IT administrators that something is wrong, even if the exact virus is never identified.
From Technology Review
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