Think of a password: brain's response to words could eradicate PIN access

In Brainprint, a newly published study in Neurocomputing, researchers from Binghamton University, New York observed the brain signals of 45 volunteers as they read a list of 75 acronyms, such as FBI and DVD.

They are said to have recorded the brain’s reaction to each group of letters, focusing on the part of the brain associated with reading and recognising words, and found that participants’ brains reacted differently to each acronym, enough that a computer system was able to identify each volunteer with 94 percent accuracy. The results suggest that brainwaves could be used by security systems to verify a person’s identity.

According to Sarah Laszlo, assistant professor of psychology and linguistics at Binghamton University and co-author of Brainprint, brain biometrics are appealing because they are cancellable and cannot be stolen in the way fingerprint or retina recognition can.

“If someone’s fingerprint is stolen, that person can’t just grow a new finger to replace the compromised fingerprint - the fingerprint for that person is compromised forever. Fingerprints are ‘non-cancellable.’ Brainprints, on the other hand, are potentially cancellable. So, in the unlikely event that attackers were actually able to steal a brainprint from an authorised user, the authorised user could then ‘reset’ their brainprint,” Laszlo said in a statement.