We’re excited to share some significant news about Binary Ninja’s role in improving medical device security. Through a collaborative effort with STR and Aarno Labs under the ARPA-H DIGIHEALS program, our platform has helped identify critical vulnerabilities in widely-used hospital patient monitoring systems.
Medical Device Security Breakthrough
STR’s Automated Medical device Patching (AMdP) project has leveraged Binary Ninja’s reverse engineering capabilities as part of an integrated approach to medical device security analysis. This collaboration has already made an impact by uncovering serious security flaws in the Contec CMS8000 patient monitor – vulnerabilities that would’ve allowed malicious actors to gain control of the device and compromise patient safety.
These findings were significant enough to prompt a safety communication from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a technical advisory from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on January 30th, 2025. Fortunately, no security incidents involving these vulnerabilities have been reported. Our team developed a patch that closed the vulnerability, which we then shared with the vendor and regulatory bodies.
The Scale of the Challenge
The numbers highlight why this work matters:
- Over 30 million legacy medical devices are currently in use across U.S. healthcare facilities
- Each device contains an estimated 6.2 vulnerabilities on average
- Traditional manual security analysis simply can’t keep pace with this volume
Current approaches to finding vulnerabilities in medical devices rely on labor-intensive manual analysis of device firmware, often producing many false positives. This is where the AMdP project comes in. AMdP enables security teams to analyze thousands of devices across a hospital’s medical equipment ecosystem and provides those teams with precise, targeted information about each vulnerability discovered.
By combining STR’s Source Hammer vulnerability detection technology with Binary Ninja’s reverse engineering platform and Aarno Labs’ CodeHawk patching capabilities, security teams now have access to powerful new automated tools for discovering and patching vulnerabilities without requiring deep expertise in reverse engineering.
In Action: Source Hammer
Verification That Goes Beyond Testing
The team used Aarno Labs’ CodeHawk Patcher to verify that Contec’s firmware update properly fixed the vulnerability. Rather than relying solely on standard testing methods, the platform provides mathematical confirmation that a patch actually resolves the security issue – giving healthcare providers much greater confidence in the solutions.
In Action: CodeHawk Patcher
What This Means for Binary Ninja Users
We’re actively working to support paid plugins on our platform and these capabilities will be offered as Binary Ninja extensions in the near future. The integration of STR’s Source Hammer and Aarno Labs’ CodeHawk Patcher represent a significant enhancement to Binary Ninja’s security analysis toolkit.
Looking Forward
When these tools become available, they’ll offer powerful new capabilities for:
- Healthcare providers looking to identify and address security risks
- Device manufacturers needing to evaluate vulnerabilities and develop targeted fixes
- Security researchers conducting comprehensive assessments of medical devices
We’re proud to be part of this important advancement in healthcare cybersecurity and look forward to bringing these capabilities to our community.
Collaborators
ARPA-H (Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health) drives innovation in healthcare and medicine by catalyzing research and development of breakthrough technologies and capabilities.
STR develops advanced technology solutions for complex national security challenges. STR's healthcare cybersecurity initiatives focus on protecting critical medical infrastructure through automated analysis and security tools.
Aarno Labs develops advanced automated capabilities to improve the security of critical systems. Aarno's CodeHawk binary analysis and patching platform provides rapid and verified mitigation of security vulnerabilities for legacy systems.
Interested in learning more about these upcoming tools? STR’s Source Hammer extension and Aarno Labs’ CodeHawk Patcher extension will be available for purchase through Binary Ninja in the near future. If you’re interested in evaluating these products, please reach out to STR or Aarno Labs for more information.