Interoperable Telesurgery Protocol Plaintext Unauthenticated MitM Hijacking

Interoperable Telesurgery Protocol Plaintext Unauthenticated MitM Hijacking(osvdb.org)

55 points by CRidge 11 years ago | 32 comments

So, run it over a VPN.

I'm not saying that they shouldn't add security to their protocol, but I can think of several ways off the top of my head to stay secure. The application-layer protocol doesn't have to be the one to implement it, network-level encapsulation can help you there.

I'm not sure how old the protocol is, but perhaps it was more important to get it working and wrap it in a VPN and then iterate on that design.

maffydub 11 years ago | |

Agreed.

It looks as though the researchers saw that as a possibility too:

"It is possible to temporarily mitigate the flaw by implementing the following workaround: Researchers have demonstrated that ITP can be operated over TLS/DTLS, using certificate-based authentication to ensure the security and integrity of the protocol."

I don't really understand why this is only a "temporary mitigation", though, rather than a reasonable long-term solution. Can anyone enlighten me?

Maybe the extra technical complexity of setting up these certificates is deemed too great, and the likelihood of people getting it wrong too high?

tptacek 11 years ago | | |

Why is that a "temporary" fix? Segregating insecure protocols to VPNs, encrypted tunnels, and backchannel networks is one of the oldest most time-honored tools in the security design toolbox. Not only is it a real fix, but it's probably the right fix.

jasonjei 11 years ago | | |

I guess my confidence in the telerobot is lowered by the fact that the protocol doesn't ensure authenticity of surgery instructions. It leads me to believe what other flaws (including those outside the scope of security) exist.

Hopefully, we're still testing these surgeries on mice and not men.

athenot 11 years ago | |

VPN may sound archaic to those outside of health, but there are quite a few intra- and inter-hospital links that rely on VPN. Even with hospital SaaS vendors, it's not uncommon.

It's not like surgery robots move around the network and come online at unexpected locations. Those installations are planned ahead and the IT considerations are part of that deployment. Also, encryption is important but so is available bandwidth and bandwidth quality: a jittery link could be as dangerous as a compromised one.

higherpurpose 11 years ago | |

The same VPNs that use weak DHE crypto?

https://weakdh.org/

juliangoldsmith 11 years ago | | |

Just use IKEv2, and you won't be affected. Or just don't use MODP1024.

virgil_disgr4ce 11 years ago |

Did some digging on this. Basically: 1) Some researchers wrote a paper called "Preliminary protocol for interoperable telesurgery" in 2009. (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.160...) 2) At the end of the paper, they write: "Also, security is an obvious requirement for real world adoption of this kind of service." 3) Last month, some other people showed that you could hax0r this unprotected protocol: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/537001/security-experts...

So in other words, somebody demonstrated that a preliminary protocol that admitted it didn't have any security was insecure. Woo!

tedunangst 11 years ago | |

> And video encryption probably isn’t practical over the kind of network links envisaged for remote surgery in extreme locations. That may not be a security concern but it does raise important issues of privacy.

That's a curious statement. How does encrypting video increase its bandwidth requirements?

gliese1337 11 years ago | | |

Typical block ciphers generally require adding padding, which increases the number of bytes that need to be transmitted. But that's negligible for any significant amount of data. I don't think it would ever noticeably increase bandwidth requirements.

DyslexicAtheist 11 years ago |

I access the site and get:

Checking your browser before accessing osvdb.org.

This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly.

Please allow up to 5 seconds… DDoS protection by CloudFlare Ray ID: 1eaaa26e86870920

have I gone back in time to 1995?

lotsofcows 11 years ago |

Authentication and encryption are hard problems. They're also solved problems (for some definition of solved). Like any other protocol, it should concentrate on solving its own problem well and leave unrelated problems to others.

araes 11 years ago |

Make a great major news story. I can think of almost nothing more terrifying than being naked on a table with some random haxxor operating a rogue telesugery robot over me. Makes even normal surgery sound good.

frozenport 11 years ago |

There is nothibg wrong with text, some of the intended uses of the protocol are over rs232.

jameskozart 11 years ago |

wow, too lame