research-article

Secure key-exchange protocol for implants using heartbeats

Authors:

Robert M. Seepers,

Zekeriya Erkin,

Ioannis Sourdis,

Christos StrydisAuthors Info & Claims

CF '16: Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers

Pages 119 - 126

https://doi.org/10.1145/2903150.2903165

Published: 16 May 2016 Publication History

Abstract

The cardiac interpulse interval (IPI) has recently been proposed to facilitate key exchange for implantable medical devices (IMDs) using a patient's own heartbeats as a source of trust. While this form of key exchange holds promise for IMD security, its feasibility is not fully understood due to the simplified approaches found in related works. For example, previously proposed protocols have been designed without considering the limited randomness available per IPI, or have overlooked aspects pertinent to a realistic system, such as imperfect heartbeat detection or the energy overheads imposed on an IMD. In this paper, we propose a new IPI-based key-exchange protocol and evaluate its use during medical emergencies. Our protocol employs fuzzy commitment to tolerate the expected disparity between IPIs obtained by an external reader and an IMD, as well as a novel way of tackling heartbeat misdetection through IPI classification. Using our protocol, the expected time for securely exchanging an 80-bit key with high probability (1-10⁻⁶) is roughly one minute, while consuming only 88 μJ from an IMD.

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Cited By

Huang JGuo XGu CMiao YHe SShu YChen J(2025)MagKey: Empowering Wearables with Ballistocardiography-based Key Generation through Magnetic Field Vibration SensingProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/37122729:1(1-28)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3712272
Zhang JZheng YXu WChen Y(2023)H2K: A Heartbeat-Based Key Generation Framework for ECG and PPG SignalsIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2021.309638422:2(923-934)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2021.3096384
Khalil UMalik OUddin MChen C(2022)A Comparative Analysis on Blockchain versus Centralized Authentication Architectures for IoT-Enabled Smart Devices in Smart Cities: A Comprehensive Review, Recent Advances, and Future Research DirectionsSensors10.3390/s2214516822:14(5168)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.3390/s22145168
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Index Terms

Secure key-exchange protocol for implants using heartbeats
1. Security and privacy

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CF '16: Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers

May 2016

487 pages

ISBN:9781450341288

DOI:10.1145/2903150

General Chairs:
Gianluca Palermo
Politecnico di Milano, IT
,
John Feo
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Northwest Institute for Advanced Computing
,
Program Chairs:
Antonino Tumeo
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA
,
Hubertus Franke
New York University and IBM Research, USA

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Micron Foundation: Micron Technology Foundation, Inc.
ACM: Association for Computing Machinery
Politecnico di Milano: Politecnico di Milano
SIGMICRO: ACM Special Interest Group on Microarchitectural Research and Processing
IBM: IBM

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 16 May 2016

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Horizon-2020

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CF'16

Sponsor:

Micron Foundation
ACM
Politecnico di Milano
SIGMICRO
IBM

CF'16: Computing Frontiers Conference

May 16 - 19, 2016

Como, Italy

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CF '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 30 of 94 submissions, 32%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 273 of 785 submissions, 35%

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CF '25

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22nd ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers

May 28 - 30, 2025

Cagliari , Italy

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Cited By

Huang JGuo XGu CMiao YHe SShu YChen J(2025)MagKey: Empowering Wearables with Ballistocardiography-based Key Generation through Magnetic Field Vibration SensingProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/37122729:1(1-28)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3712272
Zhang JZheng YXu WChen Y(2023)H2K: A Heartbeat-Based Key Generation Framework for ECG and PPG SignalsIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2021.309638422:2(923-934)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2021.3096384
Khalil UMalik OUddin MChen C(2022)A Comparative Analysis on Blockchain versus Centralized Authentication Architectures for IoT-Enabled Smart Devices in Smart Cities: A Comprehensive Review, Recent Advances, and Future Research DirectionsSensors10.3390/s2214516822:14(5168)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.3390/s22145168
Jiang DZhang GSamuel OLiu FXiao H(2022)Dual-Factor WBAN Enhanced Authentication System Based on Iris and ECG DescriptorsIEEE Sensors Journal10.1109/JSEN.2022.319864522:19(19000-19009)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2022.3198645
Jiang QChen ZMa JMa XShen JWu D(2021)Optimized Fuzzy Commitment Based Key Agreement Protocol for Wireless Body Area NetworkIEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing10.1109/TETC.2019.29491379:2(839-853)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/TETC.2019.2949137
Guglielmi AMuraro ACisotto GLaurenti N(2021)Information Theoretic Key Agreement Protocol based on ECG signals2021 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM)10.1109/GLOBECOM46510.2021.9685523(1-6)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/GLOBECOM46510.2021.9685523
Siddiqi MBeurskens RKruizinga PDe Zeeuw CStrydis C(2021)Securing Implantable Medical Devices Using Ultrasound WavesIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2021.30835769(80170-80182)Online publication date: 2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3083576
Seymen BAltop DLevi A(2020)Augmented Randomness for Secure Key Agreement using Physiological Signals2020 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS)10.1109/CNS48642.2020.9162286(1-9)Online publication date: Jun-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/CNS48642.2020.9162286
Siddiqi MDoerr CStrydis C(2020)IMDfence: Architecting a Secure Protocol for Implantable Medical DevicesIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.30156868(147948-147964)Online publication date: 2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3015686
Kim JCho KKim YLim KShin S(2019)Study on peak misdetection recovery of key exchange protocol using heartbeatThe Journal of Supercomputing10.1007/s11227-018-2616-y75:6(3288-3301)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11227-018-2616-y
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