Feds' red tape left medical devices infected with computer virus

CNet News ^ | May 2, 2009 | Stephanie Condon

[Zakeet]

The Conficker Internet virus has infected important computerized medical devices, but governmental red tape interfered with their repair, an organizer of an antivirus working group told Congress on Friday.

Rodney Joffe, one of the founders of an unofficial organization known as the Conficker Working Group, said that government regulations prevented hospital staff from carrying out the repairs.

Joffe, who also is the senior vice president for the telecom clearinghouse Neustar, told a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that over the last three weeks, he and another Conficker researcher identified at least 300 critical medical devices from a single manufacturer that have been infected with the computer virus.

The devices were used in hospitals to allow doctors to view and manipulate high-intensity scans like MRIs and were often found in or near intensive care unit facilities, connected to local area networks with other critical medical devices.

"They should have never, ever been connected to the Internet," Joffe said.

Regulatory requirements mandated that the impacted hospitals would have to wait 90 days before the systems could be modified to remove the infections and vulnerabilities.

Joffe's testimony and earlier reports of infected medical devices show the risks involved in efforts to reap the economic benefits of a networked world. President Obama's stimulus package has allocated billions of dollars for digitizing medical records and networking the nation's electric grids.

[Zakeet]

We're from the government and we're here to help you.

[HiTech RedNeck]

I don’t know what was stupider, the government regulations forbidding local repairs or the manufacturers who built a platform around Microsoft Windows hooked up to the Internet with minimal protection.

If I were king, I would require all future medical devices to use Linux.

[rarestia]

I don’t know what was stupider, the government regulations forbidding local repairs or the manufacturers who built a platform around Microsoft Windows hooked up to the Internet with minimal protection.

You have absolutely NO idea! We have GE and Philips devices and servers in our environment that we are not allowed to even breath on. We can't put monitoring agents on them, backup agents, or even anti-virus without losing the FDA certification on that device. Some of the appliances are even running on Windows 2000 Server or, worse, NT 4!

This doesn't surprise me one bit. The governmental regulation of health care industry equipment is HUGE business.

[RobinOfKingston]

I don’t know what was stupider, the government regulations forbidding local repairs or the manufacturers who built a platform around Microsoft Windows hooked up to the Internet with minimal protection.

'Stupider' still are we, for allowing the unrestrained growth of Jabba the Gubmint.