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First published April 25, 2007 as JAMIA PrePrint; doi:10.1197/jamia.M2352
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 2007;14(4):397-399
© 2007 American Medical Informatics Association


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Submitted on December 15, 2006
Accepted on April 13, 2007

Encryption Characteristics of Two USB-based Personal Health Record Devices

Adam Wright1* and Dean F. Sittig PhD2

Affiliation of the authors: 1 Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR ; 2 Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR; Department of Medical Informatics, Northwest Permanente, PC, Portland, OR

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Personal health records (PHRs) hold great promise for empowering patients and increasing the accuracy and completeness of health information. We reviewed two small USB-based PHR devices which allow a patient to easily store and transport their personal health information. Both devices offer password protection and encryption features. Analysis of the devices reveals that they store their data in a Microsoft Access database. Due to a flaw in the encryption of this database, recovering the user's password can be accomplished with minimal effort. Our analysis also revealed that, rather than encrypting health information with the password chosen by the user, the devices stored the user's password as a string in the database and then encrypted that database with a common password set by the manufacturer. This is another serious vulnerability. This paper describes the weaknesses we discovered, outlines three critical flaws with the security model used by the devices, and recommends four guidelines for improving the security of similar devices.







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