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# ICD Protocol, Implementation Weaknesses: Study
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/icd-protocol-implementation-weaknesses-study/
- Published: 2016-12-06T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T21:52:53.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Devices, #legacy-id-D5137497

In a [paper](https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/publications/article-2678.pdf?ref=fdaweb.com) prepared for the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, researchers say there are “serious protocol and implementation weaknesses on widely used implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) which lead to several active and passive software and radio-based attacks that we were able to perform in our laboratory.” The article says the researchers used inexpensive off-the-shelf equipment to reverse engineer the proprietary protocol between the ICD and the device programmer.

The proprietary protocols, the authors say, enable doctors to carry out critical functions such as changing the therapy or collecting telemetry data without having to perform surgery on the patient. They describe several attacks they performed that could compromise patient safety and say they all can be performed without needing to be near the patient. They validated that their findings apply to at least 10 ICDs now on the market.

As a short-term countermeasure, the only solution is to use jamming as a defensive mechanism, the paper concludes. For long-term countermeasures, external devices could send a “shutdown” message to an ICD so that the ICD could immediately switch to “sleep” mode after the communication ends. The researchers say they designed and formally verified a semi-offline key agreement protocol between the device programmer and the ICD.

The results of the research were shared with ICD manufacturers, the paper says.