Hacking of your medical devices by someone close to you: interesting, scary, & technical. 🥼👩🏻‍💻❤️ﮩ٨ـ⛔

Security researchers Isabel Straw, Akhil Polamarasetty, and Mustafa Jaafar released a paper last month that examines how connected medical devices can be attacked or misused by people close to you.

Authors argue that intimate partners, carers, or family members pose a different and often overlooked threat, and the right term for it is Interpersonal violence (IPV).

Abuse of medical devices can be used for:

1️⃣ “Medical gaslighting” - altering readings so victims doubt their symptoms.

2️⃣ “Munchausen-by-IoMT” - manipulating medical data to fabricate illness.

3️⃣ Chronic, subtle harm (e.g., repeated small insulin dose changes that cause long-term complications).

It’s a good example that an attacker doesn’t necessarily wear a hoodie and use a laptop in a dark, remote room. Sometimes it can be someone close to the victim.

Enjoy, and please share with your colleagues and friends in the medical industry.

More details:

Abusing the Internet of Medical Things: Evaluating Threat Models and Forensic Readiness for Multi-Vector Attacks on Connected Healthcare Devices [PDF]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.12593

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