Securing Implantable Medical Devices Using Ultrasound Waves

Modern Implantable Medical Devices (IMDs) are vulnerable to security attacks because of their wireless connectivity the outside world. One main challenges is establishing trust between IMD and an external reader/programmer in order facilitate secure communication. Numerous device-pairing schemes have been proposed address this specific challenge. However, they alone cannot protect against a battery-depletion attack which adversary able keep occupied with continuous authentication requests until battery empties. As result, energy harvesting has employed as ancillary mechanism for implementing Zero-Power Defense (ZPD) functionality such low-cost attack. In paper, we propose SecureEcho, scheme based on MHz-range ultrasound that establishes reader. addition, SecureEcho achieves ZPD without requiring any harvesting, significantly reduces design complexity. We also provide proof-of-concept implementation first ever evaluation channel, proves it infeasible attacker eavesdrop or insert messages even from range few millimeters.