A helping hand for a smart hand: How we hacked it so others wouldn’t

[harlan4096]

“The S in IoT stands for security” is perhaps the most over-told joke of recent years in the field of information security. Sure enough, security experts have long made fun of the Internet of Things, and every hacker conference worth its salt always has a talk about yet another so-called smart device having been hacked in some crazy way. Everyone is so used to such cases that they are surprised when the opposite happens and researchers conclude that a device is actually rather secure.

Usually, research focuses on IoT vulnerabilities and how they threaten users. But every coin has a flip side: Vulnerabilities in smart devices can be dangerous for the developers too; they can cause data leakage or damage, disrupt infrastructure, and render the devices themselves broken or useless.

At MWC19, experts from our Industrial Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS CERT) presented a report on smart artificial limbs developed by Motorica.

Let’s start with the good news. First, our experts did not find any vulnerabilities in the firmware of the prosthetic limbs themselves. Second, in Motorica’s system data moves in one direction only — from the limb to the cloud. This means, that it is not possible, for example, to hack into a hooked-up smart limb and take control of it remotely.

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