In the modern age where people log in various websites on the Internet on a daily basis, it is becoming a normal occurence for passwords to be forgotten. Scientists however have discovered a way to use brain waves instead of passwords, eliminating the need to memorize different combinations.
Findings from a study published in the Neurocomputing journal have shown that it is possible to make use of the one of the most powerful items: the human brain, specifically, brain prints.
Researchers from New York's Binghamton University investigated the cerebral activities of 45 participants by scanning their brain responses. They found out that each respondent has a unique brain print.
One disclaimer is that during the study, the computer only scanned brain prints with 94% accuracy.
Sarah Lazlo, co-author of the study, further explained that unlike fingerprints, brain prints as passwords also give authorized users the option to reset. "If someone's fingerprint is stolen, that person can't just grow a new finger to replace the compromised fingerprint. Fingerprints are 'non-cancellable. Brainprints, on the other hand, are potentially cancellable. So, in the unlikely event that attackers were actually able to steal a brainprint from an authorized user, the authorized user could then 'reset' their brainprint."
Binghamton University's departments of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering assistant professor, Zhanpeng Jin see the applications of the system as "being more along the lines of high-security physical locations, like the Pentagon or Air Force Labs, where there aren't that many users that are authorised to enter."
Jin added that the development of this security method would still require further study, and this system would not be easily available for daily use such as just logging into emails, social media accounts and other profiles on the Internet.
Currently, eye and fingerprint scanners, facial recognition devices are just some of the technology being used by companies that have private and sensitive information.
If further development will be done, the use of brain prints would be an incredible security tool since brains are non-accessible, and scanners for the organ do not even require the mental work of remembering a combination of upper and lower case letters with numeric characters.
