WattsUpDoc: Power Side Channels to Nonintrusively Discover Untargeted Malware on Embedded Medical Devices

Medical devices based on embedded systems are ubiquitous in clinical settings. Increasingly, they connect to networks and run off-the-shelf operating systems vulnerable to malware. But strict validation requirements make it prohibitively difficult or costly to use anti-virus software or automated operating system updates on these systems. Our add-on monitoring system, WattsUpDoc, uses a traditionally undesirable side channel of power consumption to enable run-time malware detection. In our experiments, WattsUpDoc detected previously known malware with at least 94% accuracy and previously unknown malware with at least 85% accuracy on several embedded devices—detection rates similar to those of conventional malware-detection systems on PCs. WattsUpDoc detects malware without requiring hardware or software modifications or network communication.