What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2018-10596: Medtronic 2090 Carelink Programmer Improper Restriction of Communication Channel to Intended Endpoints

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.0 v3.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 1.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2018-07-03 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-923

Description

Medtronic 2090 CareLink Programmer uses a virtual private network connection to securely download updates. It does not verify it is still connected to this virtual private network before downloading updates. The affected products initially establish an encapsulated IP-based VPN connection to a Medtronic-hosted update network. Once the VPN is established, it makes a request to a HTTP (non-TLS) server across the VPN for updates, which responds and provides any available updates. The programmer-side (client) service responsible for this HTTP request does not check to ensure it is still connected to the VPN before making the HTTP request. Thus, an attacker could cause the VPN connection to terminate (through various methods and attack points) and intercept the HTTP request, responding with malicious updates via a man-in-the-middle attack. The affected products do not verify the origin or integrity of these updates, as it insufficiently relied on the security of the VPN. An attacker with remote network access to the programmer could influence these communications.

Affected products

• Medtronic 2090 Carelink Programmer Firmware: all versions

References

• https://global.medtronic.com/xg-en/product-security/security-bulletins/carelink-2090-29901.html
• https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-medical-advisories/icsma-18-058-01
• https://ics-cert.us-cert.gov/advisories/ICSMA-18-058-01

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