A review of security challenges, attacks and resolutions for wireless medical devices

Evolution of implantable medical devices for human beings has provided a radical new way for treating chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiac arrhythmia, cochlear, gastric diseases etc. Implantable medical devices have provided a breakthrough in network transformation by enabling and accessing the technology on demand. However, with the advancement of these devices with respect to wireless communication and ability for outside caregiver to communicate wirelessly have increased its potential to impact the security, and breach in privacy of human beings. There are several vulnerable threats in wireless medical devices such as information harvesting, tracking the patient, impersonation, relaying attacks and denial of service attack. These threats violate confidentiality, integrity, availability properties of these devices. For securing implantable medical devices diverse solutions have been proposed ranging from machine learning techniques to hardware technologies. The present survey paper focusses on the challenges, threats and solutions pertaining to the privacy and safety issues of medical devices.