Medtronic Recalls a Number of Insulin Pump Models Over Hacking Concerns

Written by Bill Toulas
Last updated May 17, 2024

Medtronic (PLC), the world’s largest medical device manufacturer, has decided to recall its “MiniMed” insulin pumps over concerns of their security against hacking attempts. According to a detailed report from the FDA, the problem with this device series is that they may potentially allow attackers to read sensitive data from the device, change the pump’s settings, and control the insulin delivery, all via wireless RF communication, meaning that the attacker needs to be in close proximity. The vulnerability was assigned the identification code “CVE-2019-10964” and a CVSS v3 score of 7.1.

The list of the affected devices is the following:

If you own and use one of the above devices and you cannot afford to send it back to Medtronic for any reason, there are some mitigations that you may follow instead.

This is not the first time that Medtronic has discovered a cybersecurity issue in one of their devices, as only this March, Medtronic’s defibrillators were found to be plagued by two vulnerabilities that allowed an attacker to access the devices and alter their operation settings. In this recent case of the MiniMed insulin pumps, Medtronic estimates the vulnerable users to be approximately 4,000 diabetes patients. The company says that it’s impossible to push an update to these devices right now, and the only way to deal with the problem is to ask for a free replacement.

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