Surgical Robots The Latest To Fall To Whitehats

Researchers at the University of Washington demonstrated multiple exploitable vulnerabilities in the open-source Raven II surgical robot, showing attacks—via compromised endpoints and network man-in-the-middle/packet injection—that can produce jerky arm motions, render the robot motionless, or override surgeon inputs. The paper highlights elevated risk for telesurgery over public or lossy networks and recommends mitigations such as encrypting communications to prevent spoofing and injection.