Comments on: Adversarial mind-reading with compromised brain-computer interfaces

By: jimmoffet

jimmoffet — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 17:45:00 +0000

In a world where BCI manufacturers all take care not to put their electrodes in “unsuitable” positions and where all consumers educate themselves about security risks and commit to good security practices, this might all be irrelevant.

Everything we know about both manufacturers and consumers suggests that this will not be the case.

If BCI devices become very common, it would only take a small subset of manufacturers and a small subset of users practicing poor security to open a billion-dollar hole.

By: The Doctor

The Doctor — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:35:00 +0000

Yay, basilisk hacks. I bet the first one seen in the wild looks like a parrot.

By: Jozef

Jozef — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 13:35:00 +0000

As somebody whose job is to develop BCIs I find this article (more precisely its interpretations by blogs) hugely misleading. They use a process known for decades (P300) with hardware (Emotiv) which is all but adapted for this paradigm since its electrodes are on unsuitable positions. P300 works well with people who trained for it over extended periods of time and it is very easy to thwart its results (for example by clenching your teeth).

By: Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 04:15:00 +0000

Can we just admit that waterboarding is only to provide powerful sadists with sexual gratification?

By: Mark Dow

Mark Dow — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 03:24:00 +0000

Redundancy in responses is the most reliable information one can know about someone’s mental state.

By: zarray

zarray — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 02:08:00 +0000

Batou! Switch to autism mode!

By: zarray

zarray — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 02:07:00 +0000

I wonder if tinfoil would enhance conductivity of mind hacking.

By: zarray

zarray — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 02:04:00 +0000

Governments are always playing catch-up with technology though.

By: Boundegar

Boundegar — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 01:22:00 +0000

Holy craaaaaaap!

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 00:51:00 +0000

I knew you were gonna say that.

By: miasm

miasm — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 22:53:00 +0000

entrain your memeplex, the entelechic paradox is straining my convergence.

By: austinhamman

austinhamman — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 22:39:00 +0000

does this mean malicious users are more capable of getting usable information through a BCI than application/game programmers?

By: fuzzyfuzzyfungus

fuzzyfuzzyfungus — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 22:10:00 +0000

“We show that the entropy of the private information is decreased on the average by approximately 15 % – 40 % compared to random guessing attacks.”

It’s known-feasible (if these brain interface widgets were incapable of extracting any information, they wouldn’t actually do anything…); but the power of the technique is fairly low compared to even common and legal methods of questioning. Also, because the consumer devices are severely cost-sensitive, a state user could likely get much better results, even without breaking out the bone drill, just by moving up to classier sensors.

The really interesting thing would be if such interface hardware were to become extremely common and widely accepted. Just as ‘social’ changed the game on privacy by making it extremely trivial to collect information that was never private; but used to be confined to the target’s social circle, this sort of inferential attack could get quite interesting indeed if every malicious flash applet and adware bot is flashing test stimuli at you…

By: Elissa Malcohn

Elissa Malcohn — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 22:02:00 +0000

Tenser, said the tensor.
Tenser, said the tensor.
Tension, apprehension, and dissention have begun!

By: ldobe

ldobe — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 21:37:00 +0000

I guess the foil hatters are right this time

By: Romeo Vitelli

Romeo Vitelli — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:58:00 +0000

If it had been done and was actually feasible then it would have already been classified as top secret by every goverrnment on Earth.

By: Fang Xianfu

Fang Xianfu — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:50:00 +0000

PS I have patented this idea and if you even think about violating it I’ll make you punch you in the nose.

By: Fang Xianfu

Fang Xianfu — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:49:00 +0000

Or you could go to work for Sony and write a not-a-rootkit to detect people thinking about piracy and have them sing adverts for other Sony products every time they listen to a stolen song on their iPod! Think of the possibilities!

By: Conan Librarian

Conan Librarian — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:39:00 +0000

HA, good luck stealing my ATM password. I can’t remember it anyway!
That’s why I have it written on the back of my hand (my grocery list is on the other one).

By: Conan Librarian

Conan Librarian — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:37:00 +0000

“If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:21:00 +0000

Pictured: an interrogator uses an early prototype of the device in question to determine that the young man at his door is collecting donations for the Coast Guard Youth Auxiliary.

By: Lemoutan

Lemoutan — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:10:00 +0000

Isn’t the trope here that if it’s being written up in an academic paper then it has already been done?

By: Funk Daddy

Funk Daddy — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:05:00 +0000

Just wait for the malware! Imma develop a BCI malware projector that induces Tourette Syndrome in a lexicon limited to consumer product brand names and sex acts in the host brain.

Then I’ll charge companies to keep their brands out of the lexicon.

Bwahahha

“Fuck Snickers!” “C**t Staples!”

By: Boundegar

Boundegar — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:54:00 +0000

Holy crap.