Burglary Proof ‘Brainprints’ : Your fingerprint can be copied but not your Brainprint
The Human brain is like a multi-storied computer, storing just about anything that you see, hear or do, as memories. When you respond to certain stimuli like foods, celebrities or words, it may seem very trivial to you but these responses say a lot about yourself. For example, what you like or dislike.
In fact, researchers reveal that these brain responses can gain you safe access into heavily-restricted areas.
According to them, brain biometrics are appealing because they cannot be stolen by malicious means the way a fingerprint or retinal scan can be.
The results suggest that brainwaves could soon be used by security systems to verify a person’s identity with 100 percent accuracy.
The team from Binghamton University recorded the brain activity of 50 people wearing an electroencephalogram headset as they looked at a series of 500 images like a slice of pizza, a boat, US actor Anne Hathaway and the word conundrum.
They found that participants’ brains reacted differently to each image, enough that a computer system was able to identify each volunteer’s brainprint with 100 percent accuracy.
When you take hundreds of these images where
every person is going to feel differently about each individual one, then you can be really accurate in identifying which person it was who looked at them just by their brain activity, explained assistant psychology professor Sarah Laszlo.In their original study titled Brainprint, the team was able to identify one person out of a group of 32 by that person’s responses, with only 97 percent accuracy and that study only incorporated words not images.
It’s a big deal going from 97 to 100 percent because we imagine the applications for this technology being for high-security situations, like ensuring the person going into the Pentagon or the nuclear launch bay is the right person,” Laszlo added.
Fingerprints are ‘non-cancellable.’ If someone’s fingerprint is stolen, the print is compromised forever. He can never use it as a mode of security now. He just can’t just grow a new finger to replace the compromised fingerprint. Once it’s gone means it’s gone.
Laszlo pointed out that Brainprints are potentially cancellable. So, if by any chance it gets stolen from an authorized user, he/she can then ‘reset’ their brainprint and reuse the system.
According to Zhanpeng Jin, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, the new system can have important security applications.
We tend to see the applications of this system as being more along the lines of high-security physical locations like the Pentagon or Air Force Labs where there aren’t that many users that are authorised to enter, Jin said in a paper published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.
