Implantable Medical Devices (IMDs) have emerged as a break-through technology for e-healthcare. Healthcare providers use wireless medium of communication to monitor patients, perform diagnostics and download data in hospitals or from homes. This provides great convenience, flexibility, cost effectiveness and timely patient care. These implanted devices contain sensitive personal data and other health related information and are controlled through commands issued by healthcare staff wirelessly. Wireless medium of communication introduces several vulnerabilities which if exploited might have severe implications on the security, privacy and safety of patients using IMDs. In this paper we aim to discuss the security and privacy issues for wireless communication of Implantable Medical Devices and come out with a threat model. We also look into the methods proposed in literature to mitigate them and analyze their suitability. Intrusion Detection has gained importance over the years especially for wireless adhoc networks. Seeing the importance of constantly monitoring the IMD-reader communication in detecting and deterring security attacks, we propose a model called IMD-IDS to be integrated with cellphone or PDA, which people can carry with them. The IMD-IDS manages IMD keys, authenticates IMD readers, and blocks attempted accesses to the patients IMD from unauthorized readers using specification based intrusion detection. It monitors the communication between IMD-reader for detecting malicious activities and help patients to take corrective actions if need be. This research is the first effort to apply specification-based detection techniques to detect attacks in the IMD wireless communication.

IMDs security and privacy threat modeling IDS