By Brooks Lindsay
Medical device robots present a number of cybersecurity, privacy, and safety challenges that regulation and industry standards must address in order to safely and rapidly advance innovation in the field.
The University of Washington’s Computer Science Department recently highlighted the problem. Computer Science Researchers hacked a teleoperated surgical robot called the Raven II during a mock surgery. The hack involved moving pegs on a pegboard, launching a denial-of-service attack that stopped the robot, and making it impossible for a surgeon to remotely operate. The researchers maliciously controlled a wide range of the Raven II’s functions and overrode command inputs from the surgeon. The researchers designed the test to show how a malicious attack could easily hijack the operations of a medical device robot. The researchers concluded that established and readily available security mechanisms, like encryption and authentication, could have prevented some of these attacks. Continue reading
Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts 