Skip to content

Playing with FHIR: Hacking Healthcare APIs

Alissa KnightMitch Parker

Alissa Knight and IU Health CISO Mitch Parker demonstrate exploiting FHIR and mobile health APIs, detailing offensive kill chains and defensive remediation.

Summary

The Rapid Adoption of FHIR and Mobile Health APIs

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) APIs power modern patient portals, mobile health apps, and electronic health record (EHR) data exchanges.

Deconstructing the Healthcare API Kill Chain

Alissa Knight demonstrates systemic vulnerabilities across leading mHealth apps—including Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA), hardcoded developer keys, and unauthenticated endpoints.

Exfiltrating Protected Health Information (PHI) at Scale

Exploiting flawed API endpoints allows attackers to dump millions of patient records and medical histories without triggering perimeter WAF alarms.

Defensive Architecture and API Governance

Mitch Parker presents strategic and tactical defense maneuvers for healthcare CISOs to enforce token validation, continuous API discovery, and data integrity monitoring.

Related talks

Biohacking Village·26 min

  • DEF CON
  • Hardware
  • Date: Aug 2021
  • Location: Las Vegas

Mixæl Laufer

Four Thieves Vinegar Collective founder Mixæl Laufer shares open-source medicine projects, decentralized hardware, and grassroots biohacking initiatives.

four-thieves-vinegarhealthcarehealthcare+2