IMDGuard: Securing implantable medical devices with the external wearable guardian

Abstract

Abstract—Recent studies have revealed security vulnerabilities in implantable medical devices (IMDs). Security design for IMDs is complicated by the requirement that IMDs remain operable in an emergency when appropriate security credentials may be unavailable. In this paper, we introduce IMDGuard, a compre-hensive security scheme for heart-related IMDs to fulfill this requirement. IMDGuard incorporates two techniques tailored to provide desirable protections for IMDs. One is an ECG based key establishment without prior shared secrets, and the other is an access control mechanism resilient to adversary spoofing attacks. The security and performance of IMDGuard are evaluated on our prototype implementation. I.