Upload
ryan-m-harrison
View
195
Download
2
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Reverse engineering biomedical equipment for fun and open science
Charles Fracchia & Joel DapelloBioBright
DEFCON BioHacking Village - Aug 6 2016
What to expect from this talk
1. What is a biolab & its equipment
2. How we reverse engineered two pieces of equipment
3. Call to arms: how YOU can help
“This is my [pipette]. There are many like it, but this one is mine.” - Rifleman’s Creed, adapted by Prof. John Castorino
What is a pipette?
The equivalent of the computer mouse for biological research
Single-channel Multi-channel
Step 1: choose target carefully
Criteria:
● Easy to obtain● Made by a leading brand (aka trusted)● Elegant hack:
○ One that could be used by anyone○ No irreversible modifications
Step 1: choose target carefully
Mettler Toledo / Rainin EDP3 Plus
✔ Purchasable on eBay
● around $50
? Remote control
● mentioned on product sheet, but no details
Heu, can I haz remote
control softwarez
plz?
“I think I have one in
a secret stash in the
factory”
Step 3: find an engineer
Step 5: make it easy for others to use
This hack enables actual remote control
Use the simple board to relay messages via XBee
You can even use encryption on the XBee link
Step 2: collect samples from the RS-232 port
Sending random characters through the port yields interesting behavior
● “N” → Dumps NVRAM
● “T” → Temperature packet
Step 3: reverse temperature encoding
Increase the temperature by known amounts and collect the temperature bytes
Still a bit cryptic, until...
Step 3: reverse temperature encoding
This is very likely to be linear !
Calculate the slope: m = ( 20221 - 20608 ) / ( -87 + 84 ) = 129
Get the Y-intercept: 31444 → 243.75ºC
Hmm, strange: 0 Kelvin → -243.15 not 243.75ºC
Temp ºC ≈ n/129 - 243.75
Step 4: make it easy to use for biologists
Complete with alerts & maintenance/downtime prediction algorithms !
What we need help with
Create a repository of open & interoperable device “drivers”
Create a framework to teach these skills to biologists and doctors
Recruit hackers & reverse engineers to this cause