• Research

Will passwords become obsolete upon introduction of brainwave scanner?

Imagine there’s no need to enter passwords to access your computer anymore, but merely thinking about it will do the trick. According to researchers at UC Berkeley it will become the new way of logging in. Could these science-fictionesque ‘passthoughts’ become reality? And how safe is this type of biometric recognition compared to other techniques?

by

With the help of special software, the American researchers developed a method to analyze brainwaves very accurately. The margin of error is small and individual brainwaves are already easily recognizable. The price isn’t whopping either: approximately one hundred dollars will buy you headphones with built-in EEG and software that reads brainwaves.

“For most people biometric recognition, especially this kind of brainwave recognition, is close to science fiction”, says Tanya Ignatenko, assistant professor of Signal Processing Systems at the Department of Electrical Engineering. She laughs. Then, more seriously: “It’s the future. Biometric recognition is unique and has a number of major advantages, as opposed to today’s typed passwords. Still, I don’t think we should be looking to implement brainwave recognition just yet. Reliability isn’t great, even though Berkeley researchers say they’ve lowered the margin of error substantially.”

Share this article