Potential solution to hacking epidemic could mess up your hair
Jun 20, 2016, 5:31 AM | Updated: 10:48 am
Computer hacking has become an epidemic. That’s why at the State University of New York, Sarah Laszlo, who teaches psychology, is developing a hack-proof security system.
Her eureka moment came as she was using a brain wave detector to examine the brainwaves of people who watched pictures and words being flashed on a screen.
And she found that each person’s mental reaction to these flash cards was unique, such that a computer could learn to identify a person just by examining 30 seconds of that person’s brainwave. Essentially a brain print, which couldn’t be hacked.
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Of course, she knows people will try, so part of her study is to try to hack her own system. And to do that she recruits brain hackers. And how does brain hacking work?
“By stimulating the brain of what we call the brain hacker with a sequence that is locked to the brain activity of the target that they’re trying to impersonate,” she explains.
Yeah. She tries to beam somebody else’s brainwaves into the brain hackers head. And if the system can pass this test, it could potentially eliminate the need for passwords. Just put on the thinking cap, and you’re in.
Although Sara admits that even though she invented this, she is not using it herself.
“I am not because the way it works right now, you have to put gel in your hair to use it and I don’t want to do that every time I want to get into my computer,” she said.
Who would?
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