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Stop the insanity Stop sensationalism of medical device security I am tired of hearing about medical device security "news" chuck full of sensationalism and hyperbole.  You dont have to shout that the sky is falling.  Its not.  Yes, there are real cybersecurity problems for medical devices that need innovative engineering and policy solutions.  But there is no reason to panic or run for the hills in fright.  Even though its Halloween.  The latest example is an abstract at the Medical Device Connectivity Conference that I did not write.  I was aghast when I read what the conference had written as a placeholder for my talk on medical device security, as I have no intention to play the doom-and-gloom card about hacking medical devices.  Yes, medical devices can be hacked. Surprise. Yes, its important to share the facts for science and engineering. But lets focus our attention on improving public health rather than what sells headlines.  Heres th...

Stop the sensationalism of medical device security There have been some recent blog posts that sensationalize research on electromagnetic inference and medical devices. Worse, some statements are just factually wrong and misleading to the public. For instance, we did not use a Weezer song in any experiments involving defibrillators or pacemakers, and we did not conclude that listening to any music could harm medical devices. For an accurate non-technical summary of this work, read the MedGadget story. The full technical paper on mitigating the risks of electromagnetic interference on analog sensors appeared at the 34th Annual IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. The sky is not falling, and were quite clear that patients can remain confident in the safety of their devices. Medical devices do a world of good. download  file  now