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The plasticizer di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) is often used for PVC medical devices, that are also largely used for intensive care medical treatments, like extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) therapy. Due to the toxicological potential of DEHP, the inner exposure of patients with this plasticizer is a strong matter of concern as many studies have shown a high leaching potential of DEHP into blood. In this study, the inner DEHP exposure of patients undergoing ECMO treatment was investigated. The determined DEHP blood levels of ECMO patients and the patients of the control group ranged from 31.5 to 1009 μg/L (median 156.0 μg/L) and from 19.4 to 75.3 μg/L (median 36.4 μg/L), respectively. MEHP blood levels were determined to range from < LOD to 475 μg/L (median 15.9 μg/L) in ECMO patients and from < LOD to 9.9 μg/L (median 3.7 μg/L) in the control group patients, respectively. Increased DEHP exposure was associated with the number of cannulas and membranes of the ECMO setting, whereas residual diuresis decreased the exposure. Due to the suspected toxicological potential of DEHP, its use in medical devices should be further investigated, in particular for ICU patients with long-term exposure to PVC, like in ECMO therapy.
Usability vs. Security: The Everlasting Trade-Off in the Context of Apple iOS Mobile Hotspots
(2013)
Passwords have to be secure and usable at the same time, a trade-off that is long known. There are many approaches to avoid this trade-off, e.g., to advice users on generating strong passwords and to reject user passwords that are weak. The same usability/security trade-off arises in scenarios where passwords are generated by machines but exchanged by humans, as is the case in pre-shared key (PSK) authentication. We investigate this trade-off by analyzing the PSK authentication method used by Apple iOS to set up a secure WPA2 connection when using an iPhone as a Wi-Fi mobile hotspot. We show that Apple iOS generates weak default passwords which makes the mobile hotspot feature of Apple iOS susceptible to brute force attacks on the WPA2 handshake. More precisely, we observed that the generation of default passwords is based on a word list, of which only 1.842 entries are taken into consideration. In addition, the process of selecting words from that word list is not random at all, resulting in a skewed frequency distribution and the possibility to compromise a hotspot connection in less than 50 seconds. Spot tests show that other mobile platforms are also affected by similar problems. We conclude that more care should be taken to create secure passwords even in PSK scenarios.