They're not too good at it yet, but the Wright Brothers weren't flying passengers to California in their first week either.
Also the technology requires a headset, physical contact by an actual piece of hardware - for now, something called an "EEG" headset. The flip side is that these pieces of technology are often researched and fielded by two different industries — video games and "hands-free" operators (the same guys who gave Stephen Hawking a voice) — and those two industries are renowned for ridiculous jumps in technology.
So, it's not much of a threat now, but it will probably be one in the future.
A team of security researchers from Oxford, UC Berkeley, and the University of Geneva say that they were able to deduce digits of PIN numbers, birth months, areas of residence and other personal information by presenting 30 headset-wearing subjects with images of ATM machines, debit cards, maps, people, and random numbers in a series of experiments.
Now these experiments weren't too successful, pulling pin numbers at a rate of one for every three participants. The experiment also relied on event-related potentials, meaning the subject needed to be presented a picture, or some type of stimuli, for "hackers" to phish information out of their brain waves.
Still, the researchers believe that their experiment was too simple, and that sophisticated code writers will be able to write complex malware for future devices, disguised as "apps," which the user would then download and use.
And, even though the technology isn't quite up to speed yet, the most prophetic indication may be that most of us carry super-smart, sophisticated machines with us every day, and they all use "apps."
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