Security Risk Assessment of Metaverse Based Healthcare Systems Based on Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE)

Metaverse has been gaining the attention of industry and academia equally in the recent past. With the immense capabilities backed by cutting-edge technologies, it has the potential to revolutionize every domain, especially healthcare. Metaverse can help to give customized treatment by a specialist to a patient anywhere in the world. However, akin to any new technology, the adoption of a metaverse in healthcare is susceptible to security issues and vulnerabilities. A proper study of the weakness and potential vulnerabilities is required before the active integration of metaverse into healthcare. Therefore, in this paper, we analyze the existing applications of the metaverse and its enabling technologies in the healthcare domain and investigate the security issues that exist or are likely to arise. Through the literature analysis, we identified three essential metaverse components for future healthcare systems, namely, Extended Reality (XR), Blockchain, and Avatar. These components and their combinations in varying degrees will give different dimensions to metaverse-based healthcare solutions. Further, we analyzed the risks associated with these components and their combinations. Here, the overall risk assessment was based on the existing literature and vulnerabilities, new cyber attacks, and the current trend of cyber attacks in the healthcare domain. The vulnerabilities collected from the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) site were used for studying the risks associated with metaverse, healthcare and their integration.