Securing hospitals from exploitation of hardware ports

Electronic devices are widely used in today’s hospitals and the possibilities they offer are increasing every day. The devices are often embedded systems, running outdated operating systems and need to have a high uptime which makes them vulnerable to malicious software (malware). This thesis examines the ways malware can propagate through the Universal Serial Bus (USB) with the help of social engineering. Valuable assets are defined and different threat scenarios to these assets are presented. Lastly, the different scenarios are evaluated based on which assets they impact and how to effective mitigate the threats they present. Short- and long-term mitigations are presented to secure the devices in a broader view