New device monitors hospital equipment for malware infections

MIT Technology Review : Many pieces of medical technology are susceptible to infection by computer viruses and worms that can disrupt the equipment’s ability to function and thereby seriously threaten the safety of medical patients. Unfortunately, a lot of that technology is also incompatible with standard malware detection and removal tools. Now, Kevin Fu of the University of Michigan and his colleagues have developed a monitoring system called WattsUpDoc. The monitor is attached to a medical device and learns the normal power-consumption patterns of the equipment. Then it looks for changes in power consumption that could signal the presence of malware that is using energy outside of normal operation. The monitor is also equipped with an analysis database of known malware so that it can examine the system to identify the specific culprit. In testing, it successfully identified the presence of malware listed in its database 94% of the time. Its success with unknown malware ranged between 84% and 91%. Fu expects at least another year of field testing is needed before WattsUpDoc can be commercialized. But when that happens, it will likely also be useful for monitoring industrial control systems such as in power plants.