Remembering the passwords for all your sites can get frustrating. There are only so many punctuation, number substitutes and upper case variations you can recall, and writing them down for all to find is hardly an option.
Thanks to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information, you may not need to type those pesky passwords in the future. Instead, you’ll only need to think them.
By measuring brainwaves with biosensor technology, researchers are able to replace passwords with “passthoughts” for computer authentication.
A US$100 headset wirelessly connects to a computer via Bluetooth, and the device’s sensor rests against the user’s forehead, providing an electroencephalogram (EEG) signal from the brain.
Other biometric authentication systems use fingerprint or retina scans for security, but they’re often expensive and require extensive equipment.
The NeuroSky Mindset looks just like any other Bluetooth set and is more user-friendly, researchers say. Brainwaves are also unique to each individual, so even if someone knew your passthought, their emitted EEG signals would be different.
In a series of tests, participants completed seven different mental tasks with the device, including imagining their finger moving up and down and choosing a personalised secret. Simple actions such as focussing on breathing or on a thought for 10 seconds resulted in successful authentication.
The key to passthoughts, researchers found, is finding a mental task that users won’t mind repeating on a daily basis.
Most participants found it difficult to imagine performing an action from their favourite sport because it was unnatural to imagine movement without using their muscles.
More preferable passthoughts were those where subjects had to count objects of a specific colour or imagine singing a song.
The idea of mind-reading is convenient, but if the devices aren’t accessible people will refuse to use it no matter how accurate the system, researchers explain.
By Camille Bautista – 10 April 2013 – Mashable
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