Brain hacking, it’s time to protect our mind from hackers .. Brain hacking is the act to read the content of the human brain and modify it, is the technology mature to allow hackers to penetrate our mind? Brain hacking refers the possibility to attack the human brain to extract sensitive information such as data and memories, including also the capability to inject new information. Exactly as any other computer computers, human brains may be vulnerable to hacking attacks, state of the art of technology already allow researchers to perceive changes in the magnetic field related to brain activity making possible reading of people’s thoughts. Neurotechnologist are currently working to the designing of a portable brain monitor called iBrain that can detect the brain’s electrical activity from the surface of the scalp, individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or similar pathologies still have healthy brain activity and the iBrain could be used to control a mouse pointer on a computer screen. Recently researchers at the Usenix Security conference have demonstrated that exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in the human brain is possible hack it. The scientists used a commercial off-the-shelf brain-computer interface for the brain hacking resulting in the disclosure of information that victims had in their minds. The brain-computer interface consists of principal components • the hardware composed by a (an EEG; an electroencephalograph) equipped with a series of sensors that are placed directly on the human scalp • the software designed to interpret brain activity signals The price for a Brain Computer Interface is sensibly decreased in the last years, just around Rs. 15000 are sufficient to buy an Emotiv or Neurosky BCI, immediately usable to control the user computer. The Brain Computer Interfaces shall be accompanied with API to build applications able to elaborate BCI’s output. Researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Geneva, and the University of California, Berkeley have designed an application able to access to sensitive data in the human brain, hacking brain makes possible the disclosure of sensitive information such as the debit card PIN, home location and month of birth. |
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