TY - JOUR
T1 - Security Assessment of Cyberphysical Digital Microfluidic Biochips
AU - Ali, Sk Subidh
AU - Ibrahim, Mohamed
AU - Sinanoglu, Ozgur
AU - Chakrabarty, Krishnendu
AU - Karri, Ramesh
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2004-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2016/5/1
Y1 - 2016/5/1
N2 - A digital microfluidic biochip (DMFB) is an emerging technology that enables miniaturized analysis systems for point-of-care clinical diagnostics, DNA sequencing, and environmental monitoring. A DMFB reduces the rate of sample and reagent consumption, and automates the analysis of assays. In this paper, we provide the first assessment of the security vulnerabilities of DMFBs. We identify result-manipulation attacks on a DMFB that maliciously alter the assay outcomes. Two practical result-manipulation attacks are shown on a DMFB platform performing enzymatic glucose assay on serum. In the first attack, the attacker adjusts the concentration of the glucose sample and thereby modifies the final result. In the second attack, the attacker tampers with the calibration curve of the assay operation. We then identify denial-of-service attacks, where the attacker can disrupt the assay operation by tampering either with the droplet-routing algorithm or with the actuation sequence. We demonstrate these attacks using a digital microfluidic synthesis simulator. The results show that the attacks are easy to implement and hard to detect. Therefore, this work highlights the need for effective protections against malicious modifications in DMFBs.
AB - A digital microfluidic biochip (DMFB) is an emerging technology that enables miniaturized analysis systems for point-of-care clinical diagnostics, DNA sequencing, and environmental monitoring. A DMFB reduces the rate of sample and reagent consumption, and automates the analysis of assays. In this paper, we provide the first assessment of the security vulnerabilities of DMFBs. We identify result-manipulation attacks on a DMFB that maliciously alter the assay outcomes. Two practical result-manipulation attacks are shown on a DMFB platform performing enzymatic glucose assay on serum. In the first attack, the attacker adjusts the concentration of the glucose sample and thereby modifies the final result. In the second attack, the attacker tampers with the calibration curve of the assay operation. We then identify denial-of-service attacks, where the attacker can disrupt the assay operation by tampering either with the droplet-routing algorithm or with the actuation sequence. We demonstrate these attacks using a digital microfluidic synthesis simulator. The results show that the attacks are easy to implement and hard to detect. Therefore, this work highlights the need for effective protections against malicious modifications in DMFBs.
KW - Cyber physical digitalmicrofludic biochip
KW - DMFB in-vitro
KW - DMFB synthesis
KW - Trojan
KW - denial of service attack
KW - security
KW - tampering
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84976586985&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84976586985&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TCBB.2015.2509991
DO - 10.1109/TCBB.2015.2509991
M3 - Article
C2 - 26701892
AN - SCOPUS:84976586985
SN - 1545-5963
VL - 13
SP - 445
EP - 458
JO - IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
JF - IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
IS - 3
M1 - 7360149
ER -