  Teleoperated robots are playing an increasingly important role in military
actions and medical services. In the future, remotely operated surgical robots
will likely be used in more scenarios such as battlefields and emergency
response. But rapidly growing applications of teleoperated surgery raise the
question; what if the computer systems for these robots are attacked, taken
over and even turned into weapons? Our work seeks to answer this question by
systematically analyzing possible cyber security attacks against Raven II, an
advanced teleoperated robotic surgery system. We identify a slew of possible
cyber security threats, and experimentally evaluate their scopes and impacts.
We demonstrate the ability to maliciously control a wide range of robots
functions, and even to completely ignore or override command inputs from the
surgeon. We further find that it is possible to abuse the robot's existing
emergency stop (E-stop) mechanism to execute efficient (single packet) attacks.
We then consider steps to mitigate these identified attacks, and experimentally
evaluate the feasibility of applying the existing security solutions against
these threats. The broader goal of our paper, however, is to raise awareness
and increase understanding of these emerging threats. We anticipate that the
majority of attacks against telerobotic surgery will also be relevant to other
teleoperated robotic and co-robotic systems.
