Can Snoops Hack Your Brain?

The human brain is not immune to hackers.

So says Ivan Martinovic, a computerscientist at the University of Oxford who is exploring whether brain wave-reading technology can covertly obtain the secret information we store in our heads.

His tool? A $300 video game controller.

For this study, Martinovic, along with researchers from California and Switzerland, developed a program that interfaces with an electroencephalograph (EEG) device identical to the ones that are marketed for gaming and entertainment. But instead of controlling a character on a screen, participants’ brain wave activity was imaged and analyzed as they were shown pictures of numbers, names, logos and people.

Researchers looked for what’s called a P300 response, a very distinct brain wave pattern that occurs when one relates to or recognizes something. It would occur, for instance, if you were to look at a picture of your mother, or see your Social Security number written out.

While this technology doesn’t allow someone else to actively go in and search around in our brains, it’s definitely a step in that direction. But for this method to yield any valuable information, many conditions need to be exactly right. 

If the subject in question knew the hacker’s motives, were suspicious, scared or simply chose to not think about the subject at hand, gleaning anything useful from the brain wave data would be difficult, if not impossible. The technology is definitely not a brute-force method of extracting information, but could be a useful tool in the hands of a great social engineer.

The efficacy is still very murky, though. ExtremeTech reports that the 28-subject test yielded useful information 10 to 40 percent of the time. That’s not the most reliable success rate, but it’s much quicker and closer than trying to simply guess a 16-digit credit card number or home address.

This is just the start of what is sure to be an immense amount of research into the application of mind-reading by way of brain-computer interface technology. This brings us one step closer to unraveling the mysteries of the human mind and our endless fascination with all things telepathy and mind control.

 Article provided by SecurityNewsDaily, a sister site to Laptopmag.com.

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Platformer Game Hello Worlds! Works Out Your Brain

Addictive, minimalistic, frustrating, brain-melting fun. If I could have just four adjectives and a noun to describe Hello Worlds!, I would pick those exact words. Get ready to meet one of the most engaging Flash platformers you can play in your browser, for free, right now.

In Hello Worlds!, your character moves across all parallel worlds at the same time.Other platformers, such as Elephant Quest, involve vast, sprawling levels where you are beset by enemies on every side and must shoot your way to freedom while frantically running and jumping all over the place. By contrast, Hello Worlds! has no shooting whatsoever. The levels aren't exactly sprawling, either, with each taking up just one screen (700 by 550 pixels). In that regard, it is similar to another platformer, Achievement Unlocked 2, but that's where the similarity ends. Created by the University of Washington's Computer Science department, Hello Worlds is a very cerebral platformer.

Each Hello Worlds! level is split into two, three or four parallel worlds. A wall in one world will block your way in all worlds; a platform in one world will hold you aloft in the other ones. The whole game is built on the interaction between these worlds: Stand on a ledge in one world, and jump onto a higher ledge in another world.

Each world has a door; when you get to it and hit Space, that world disappears. Sometimes it goes away entirely, leaving you with a simpler level, and sometimes it is replaced with another world which you must now navigate. Every Hello Worlds! level also has a "level door," which you must reach to complete the whole level. Oh, and don't forget to collect the stars you see along the way: They help the score, and allow you to get to the more advanced levels.

Making it through a level depends on navigating all worlds correctly. If you trigger the door on one of the worlds too soon and make it disappear when you actually still needed it, you will not be able to complete the level. Fortunately, you can press and hold V on your keyboard to undo your actions. This isn't a quick undo to a save point, but actually a rewind much like the one in a VCR (or VLC, if you're more modern). You see your character quickly retracing its steps, and can release the V key at any time you want to stop, even midair.

Hello Worlds!'s rewind feature doesn't just retrace running and jumping, but all actions. So if you just realized you shouldn't have made that last world disappear, no problem--just rewind.

When a level is split into four, it can get tricky to visualize. Sometimes you see where you're trying to go, but you're not quite sure what you should be standing on to get there. When that happens, you can hit C to converge all parts of the level, so you're looking at the whole picture for once. But you can only look: While holding C, you are not allowed to move.

Hello Worlds! does away with many of the frustrations present in other games, such as constantly dying or having to run like mad. If you like to combine running and jumping with thinking, this free game deserves at least one coffee break.

Note: The Download button takes you to Kongregate, where you can play this game in your Flash-enabled Web browser.

--Erez Zukerman

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here