Live Demonstration: Cyber Attack Against an Ingestible Medical Device

Intelligent and compact healthcare systems are gaining interest, potentially changing medical monitoring and treatment procedures. Ingestible medical devices (IMD) inside a swallowable pill can transform unpleasant and immobile operations like endoscopy into a remote process. These devices raise a concern for security, where its absence can result in a lethal attack [1] . Some attacks have been shown on medical devices, such as insulin pumps and cardiac defibrillators [2] . A typical challenge for securing an IMD is its resource-constrained design. IMDs have to be small in size to make them swallowable, which limits the battery size. This obliges the device to run on ultra-low power, targeting hours of measurement and data transmission on a small battery. Considering that, it is generally not feasible to have calculation-intensive encryption or a separate cryptography core on the device. However, the security of an IMD is crucial as a breach can cause leakage of confidential data or a wrong diagnosis.