Communications of the ACM
Professor Shows Brain Waves Can Be sed to Detect Potentially Harmful Personal Information
Researchers at Texas Tech University are exploring how electroencephalogram brain patterns could be used for user authentication.
Credit: neurosciencestuff.tumblr.com
Texas Tech University professor Abdul Serwadda and colleagues are exploring how electroencephalogram (EEG) brain patterns and other behavioral modalities could be used to augment traditional user authentication methods.
In their study of EEG authentication systems, the researchers found the technology gives away non-authentication-centric information, which means brain waves can reveal potentially harmful information about users.
EEG authentication systems are able to glean much more information about their users, and Serwadda wants to bring greater attention to the need to focus more on minimizing the leakage of sensitive personal information. He notes the vast majority of research on the EEG authentication problem is focused on designing systems that can attain the lowest error rates.
However, Serwadda says a system with the lowest authentication error rates can still leak a significantly higher amount of private information. As a result, Serwadda says the EEG authentication system might not be as useful as its low error rates suggest.
"In light of the privacy challenges seen with the EEG, it is noteworthy that the next wave of technology after the EEG is already being developed," he notes. "One of those technologies is functional near-infrared spectroscopy [fNIRS], which has a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than an EEG."
From Texas Tech Today
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