Malware in a X-Ray Machine Adds Tumors to the Test Results of Patients

What Malware these days are getting more versatile in the way they do attacks.  Ransomware attacks were one-way people thought of new ways to use malicious programs to exhort money from unfortunate victims.  Other attacks are meant to exploit vulnerabilities to get into your system to steal your data.  Recently however, there has been a new kind of malware that was recently made that can alter your x-ray results and add fake tumors into you results.

Cyber Security researchers recently created malware that was so effective in adding fake lung tumors, it was able to fool 3 different radiologists.  It also has the capability of planting different kinds of false evidences for different signs of disease on the body such as brain tumors and other serious illness symptoms.  Researchers even stated that it could also tamper with actual positive results and make them seem like they are negative causing patients to be unable to get the treatment they may need.

Fortunately for us, this was just a security test executed by the security experts to show the medical community how vulnerable their security on the diagnostic machines are.

What does this mean for us?

With how easily our researchers were able to make these kinds of malware, it means that its just as easy for those will malicious intentions to do the same.  With these kinds of flaws prevalent in most healthcare diagnostic machines, there may be a day where we will be affected on en mass like when hospitals around the globe were hit by the ransomware attack, WannaCry.

Below are a few solutions you can consider if you would like to better safeguard your specialized equipment:

  • Exabeam UEBA for behavioral analytics (for detecting any abnormal and risky behavior by users, machines or other entities on the corporate network)
  • Trend Micro TippingPoint IPS is an appliance that can detect, and block network traffic associated with vulnerabilities being exploited by threat actors targeting Medical devices such as CT scan and MRIs.
  • Trend Micro Deep Discovery Inspector is an appliance that can detect malicious traffic including command-and-control communications that may be found within these networks and associated with a breach. Unusual traffic can also be identified.
  • Trend Micro Safelock for those medical devices running on Legacy Windows OS. It can be used for smart whitelisting protection that can keep the system still locked under maintenance, and just allow approved software to be updated.

To learn more about these solutions, you may contact us at 8893-9515 and we would be happy to answer any inquiries that you may have!

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