In a letter to health care providers and laboratory personnel, the FDA said that the Universal Copy Service software in US biotechnology company Illumina sequencing instruments could be exploited to let an unauthorized user do the following:
- Take remote control
- Alter settings, configurations, software, or data on the instrument or a customer’s network
- Impact data intended for use in clinical diagnosis, leading to no results, incorrect results, or manipulated results.
At the time of the letter, neither the FDA nor Illumina had received any reports indicating the vulnerability had been exploited and it is unclear how many customers were affected but sequencers installed was more than 22,000 as of January.
Illumina CTO Alex Aravanis said in a statement on LinkedIn that the issue was found during “ongoing efforts to assess potential vulnerabilities and exposures” and they have developed a software to fix it.
This follows a separate Illumina cybersecurity vulnerability announced in June 2022.
Roy Akerman, Co-Founder & CEO, Rezonate had this to say:
“Healthcare providers continue to be a main target for attackers and therefore need to be on top of their game in terms of preventative actions, continuous patching, and further ability to monitor and detect attempts to exploit and compromise identity and data. While traditional endpoints and network protection have improved for the past years, IOT devices continue to lag behind in terms of visibility and effective controls which the Healthcare system is highly dependent on for critical procedures and diagnosis.”
The good news is that this issue was disclosed so that it can be addressed. And it illustrates that everyone in general and health tech companies specifically need to make sure that issues like this far less likely to make it out the door so that we are all safer as a result.
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This entry was posted on May 1, 2023 at 8:23 am and is filed under Commentary with tags FDA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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FDA Warns Of Vulnerability In Illumina Sequencing Instruments
In a letter to health care providers and laboratory personnel, the FDA said that the Universal Copy Service software in US biotechnology company Illumina sequencing instruments could be exploited to let an unauthorized user do the following:
At the time of the letter, neither the FDA nor Illumina had received any reports indicating the vulnerability had been exploited and it is unclear how many customers were affected but sequencers installed was more than 22,000 as of January.
Illumina CTO Alex Aravanis said in a statement on LinkedIn that the issue was found during “ongoing efforts to assess potential vulnerabilities and exposures” and they have developed a software to fix it.
This follows a separate Illumina cybersecurity vulnerability announced in June 2022.
Roy Akerman, Co-Founder & CEO, Rezonate had this to say:
“Healthcare providers continue to be a main target for attackers and therefore need to be on top of their game in terms of preventative actions, continuous patching, and further ability to monitor and detect attempts to exploit and compromise identity and data. While traditional endpoints and network protection have improved for the past years, IOT devices continue to lag behind in terms of visibility and effective controls which the Healthcare system is highly dependent on for critical procedures and diagnosis.”
The good news is that this issue was disclosed so that it can be addressed. And it illustrates that everyone in general and health tech companies specifically need to make sure that issues like this far less likely to make it out the door so that we are all safer as a result.
Share this:
Like this:
Related
This entry was posted on May 1, 2023 at 8:23 am and is filed under Commentary with tags FDA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.