New security analysis tools have led to the discovery of critical vulnerabilities in widely-deployed hospital patient monitoring devices used for tracking vital signs and providing life-saving care. The discovery demonstrates how next generation cybersecurity tools can dramatically improve the security of critical medical infrastructure across U.S. healthcare facilities.
The tools, developed under STR’s Automated Medical device Patching (AMdP) project with funding through Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)‘s DIGIHEALS program, enabled the discovery of security flaws in the Contec CMS8000 patient monitor that could allow malicious actors to compromise patient safety. The findings triggered a January 30th FDA safety communication and advisory from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). No security incidents involving these vulnerabilities have been reported.
AMdP represents a breakthrough in automation that rapidly identifies genuine vulnerabilities while filtering out false positives. This enables security teams to analyze thousands of devices across a hospital’s diverse medical equipment ecosystem with precision.
AMdP combines STR’s vulnerability detection technology with Vector 35‘s Binary Ninja reverse engineering platform and Aarno Labs’ firmware analysis capabilities. Binary Ninja now hosts AMdP’s capabilities through its cloud infrastructure, giving security teams powerful automated tools without requiring deep expertise in reverse engineering.
“With over 30 million legacy medical devices in U.S. healthcare facilities, and an estimated 6.2 vulnerabilities per device on average, manual security analysis cannot scale,” said Thomas Sherman, AMdP Principal Investigator at STR. “Our tools enable healthcare providers to rapidly assess their medical equipment, while giving device manufacturers new options for precise security fixes.”
In addition to finding vulnerabilities, AMdP tools verified that the vendor’s firmware update correctly addressed the critical issue. Aarno Labs‘ CodeHawk Platform provides automated software verification, mathematically confirming that a patch truly eliminates the vulnerability—not just that it appears to work in tests.
Widespread adoption of these automated security tools could dramatically improve patient safety across the U.S. healthcare system, enabling coordinated response to medical device security at a national scale.
Organizations interested in evaluating AMdP can access its capabilities through the Binary Ninja commercial platform. For alternative deployment options or integration with existing security infrastructure, STR offers flexible transition paths tailored to specific use cases.