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Cybersecurity For Medical Imaging Devices Found Wanting

Cybersecurity For Medical Imaging Devices Found Wanting

Experimental Malware Exposes Flaws in Medical Imaging Security

A recent Washington Post article tells of IT researchers who have created malware designed to alter medical images, as part of a project to delineate the security vulnerabilities of medical imaging equipment and networks.

Potential For Havoc in Medical Diagnoses

The malware was able to add or remove images such as tumors and lesions to MRIs and CT scans, using machine learning and AI to create believable altered images customized to each patient. In the test, doctors were fooled 94% to 99% of the time into misdiagnosing a patient, by either recommending treatment for a condition that didn’t exist, or by declaring healthy a patient whose symptoms had been removed from the scans.

No Connected Device Is Safe

A sobering technological experiment indeed, but one that demonstrates the need to develop cybersecurity strategies for a wide variety of devices, even those that are not normally thought of as “connected devices.” More details on the malware research here.

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