Proved: medical equipment can be hacked and give false diagnoses

Modern medical equipment thatstores critical patient information, such as diagnostic results, usually connected to the Internet. Unfortunately, all these data are poorly protected, and researchers from the Ben-Gurion University in Israel have demonstrated what this means. In particular, they were able to hack the computed tomography apparatus for diagnosing cancer and make it show a positive result. Scientists have told how such a deception can be dangerous, and what needs to be done in order to avoid this.

According to researcher Kim Zetter, for hackingmedical equipment can be used malware that is embedded in the memory via the Internet. Such a case in the history has never been fixed, that researchers advise to protect the equipment before the vulnerability will be used by attackers.

False diagnosis of cancer in completelya healthy person in itself seems like a very terrible mistake. Besides the fact that this will affect the patient’s mental state and life, he may also be prescribed unnecessary treatments that can harm his health. According to scientists, the error of radiologists, caused by the results of the hacked equipment, may have wider consequences, including the change in the course of political elections.

To prevent this, researchersrecommend right now to do the strengthening of protection of medical devices. In particular, they talk about the need to encrypt information to prevent attackers from viewing and changing diagnostic data. Particular attention should be paid to hospitals that use old equipment - an error can cost the lives of patients.

And what do you think - what consequences can a hacking of medical equipment have? Write your answers in the comments, and you can discuss the topic in more detail in our Telegram-chat.