Microfluidic Trojan Design in Flow-based Biochips
Mohammed Shayan1,a, Sukanta Bhattacharjee2, Yong-Ak Song3, Krishnendu Chakrabarty4 and Ramesk Karri1,b
1New York University
amos283@nyu.edu
brkarri@nyu.edu
2IIT Guwahati
sukantab@iitg.ac
3NYU Abu Dhabi
rafael.song@nyu.edu
4Duke University
krish@duke.edu
ABSTRACT
Microfluidic technologies find application in various safety-critical fields such as medical diagnostics, drug research, and cell analysis. Recent work has focused on security threats to microfluidic-based cyberphysical systems and defenses. So far the threat analysis has been limited to the cases of tampering with control software/hardware, which is common to most cyberphysical control systems in general; in a sense, such an approach is not exclusive to microfluidics. In this paper, we present a stealthy attack paradigm that uses characteristics exclusive to the microfluidic devices - a microfluidic trojan. The proposed trojan payload is a valve whose height has been perturbed to vary its pressure response. This trojan can be triggered in multiple ways based on time or specific operations. These triggers can occur naturally in a bioassay or added into the controlling software. We showcase the trojan application in carrying out practical attacks - contamination, parameter-tampering and denial-of-service - on a real-life bioassay implementation. Further, we present guidelines to launch stealthy attacks and to counter them.
Keywords: Microfluidic, Trojans, Fluid Flow, Valves, Security
