Via Mashable
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Remembering the passwords for all your sites can get frustrating.
There are only so many punctuation, number substitutes and uppercase
variations you can recall, and writing them down for all to find is
hardly an option.
Thanks to researchers at the UC 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 $100 headset wirelessly connects to a computer via
Bluetooth, and the device's sensor rests against the user’s forehead,
providing a 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 personalized secret. Simple
actions like focusing on breathing or on a thought for ten 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 favorite
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 color or imagine singing a song.
The idea of mind-reading is pretty convenient, but if the devices
aren't accessible people will refuse to use it no matter how accurate
the system, researchers explain.
