Hackers' Next Target — Your Brain? 295
Hugh Pickens writes "Wired reports that as neural devices become more complicated — and go wireless — some scientists say the risks of 'brain hacking' should be taken seriously. '"Neural devices are innovating at an extremely rapid rate and hold tremendous promise for the future," said computer security expert Tadayoshi Kohno of the University of Washington. "But if we don't start paying attention to security, we're worried that we might find ourselves in five or 10 years saying we've made a big mistake."' For example, the next generation of implantable devices to control prosthetic limbs will likely include wireless controls that allow physicians to remotely adjust settings on the machine. If neural engineers don't build in security features such as encryption and access control, an attacker could hijack the device and take over the robotic limb." Relatedly, several users have written to tell us that science may be closer to the science fiction "mind wipe" than previously thought. Put this all together and I welcome the next step in social networking; letting the cloud drive my limbs around town via a live webcam and then wiping the memory from my brain. Who has MyLimb.com parked and is willing to deal?
Ack, should have aimed this at 'Snow Crash' (Score:3, Interesting)
Spam (Score:3, Interesting)
The big worry is not hacking, after all I am sure that there will be plenty of security software you can download, but rather the effects of spam.
Don't need electronics to hack someones brain (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone at work mentioned to me recently that it will be a scary day when someone can program your brain. Well I've already seen it happen. My local Walmart is in sort of a high-risk part of town, so the "greeters" will ask to see your receipt if you have any bulk items in your cart that aren't in bags. So people get used to having their receipt handy when they walk out the door. Now yesterday it was kind of busy, and one greeter to check receipts. Guess what I saw? A line of about 10 people waiting to show their receipt before leaving the store. Meanwhile I push my cart right around them (I've already waited in line for 25 minutes just to pay, I'm not going to wait again to leave the store). It appears that those in line were robots that have been programmed (conditioned) so much that they couldn't think of leaving without waiting to show their receipt. Keep in mind that there is not sign saying you have to show your receipt.
Re:Don't need electronics to hack someones brain (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, they can't. The question, "can I look in your bag?"
is replied, at least by myself, with, "are you a police officer with a warrant?"
I've worked retail. You can't catch good shoplifters. You just have to let them go, focus on the paying customers, and accept the losses as the cost of doing business.
Re:No... not buying this at all (Score:1, Interesting)
Some anti-virus might actually be useful [eurekalert.org] here. Cats [bbc.co.uk] been hacking humans for centuries.
Re:Ultimate slaves? (Score:3, Interesting)
By the time you have decent neural I/O, you'll have a world of simulators to choose from. Nobody's going to kidnap anybody if they can experience the same thing with a cheap simulation.
Re:Don't need electronics to hack someones brain (Score:3, Interesting)
They're not robots. They're exercising free will to make a choice you disagree with. They see it as an element of manners to show that they're not stealing, and for some reason they care about how they look to that greeter despite knowing they're not thieves. Let them get on with it without the name-calling.
Re:No... not buying this at all (Score:3, Interesting)
please define 'soul'
It would be hard to do per genus proximum et differentia specifica... Let me just say that it's what creates time and space, enables you to make choices (free will) and controls the body via the brain.
Some people (like Dawkins, IIRC) like to say that the brain is an on-board computer, of sorts, for the body. It's a great analogy, because a computer is blind and inert without someone to either operate it or program it. The soul is the "user", what you experience is the "software", your body is the "hardware".
Re:No... not buying this at all (Score:2, Interesting)
You remember , because of your physical brain , but you are , because of your soul.
QFT. It's somewhat sad that people overlook the most basic experience they have... Even Descartes, when he wanted to put every bit of knowledge he had to doubt, still could not doubt that his soul exists. After all - without a soul, we would merely be biological machines (the kind La Mettrie spoke of), which would not be aware of their own existence, but would simply do what their brains would order them to.
Let me use my favourite quote:
"It must be confessed, moreover, that perception, and that which depends on it, are inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is, by figures and motions, And, supposing that there were a mechanism so constructed as to think, feel and have perception, we might enter it as into a mill. And this granted, we should only find on visiting it, pieces which push one against another, but never anything by which to explain a perception. This must be sought, therefore, in the simple substance, and not in the composite or in the machine."
How ironic... (Score:3, Interesting)
It is that ... by silently critiquing religion, you've fallen into your own self defined trap of "US or them"..
And, we might also note, that "threats against the afterlife" is essentially interchangable with "saving the planet"
Re:No... not buying this at all (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it interesting that you are so easily able to deny that something could not possibly be self-aware without a soul. Do you have any proof, any at all beyond hopes and dreams? Many modern philosophic theories of consciousness eliminate the necessity of the Cartesian theatre (I find Dennet's pretty compelling), and many experiments bear out a reality that would be quite bizarre if an external entity such as a soul really drove us.
As long as we are talking of merely feelings with no basis, I find no evidence to dissuade me that I am anything more than a meat machine with some clever biological and memetic tricks. I see no reason to increase the complexity of the system by necessitating that we have such (odd at least it seems to us) advanced biological machinery that is our brain with such complex parallel behaviour and yet it exists without purpose or meaning because it does nothing. Because requiring the existence of the soul which drives us means the brain is nothing, it serves no purpose. Why do you have it? Why does our body expend so much resources keeping it functioning? Our pure autonomic functions can be handled by the cerebellum and the spinal cord (and probably far less), the rest of it is totally meaningless.
Combine this with the fact that our brains share so many similarities with many of the animals around us, yet oddly (at least inasmuch as many humans find it necessary to place themselves on a higher pedestal than everything else around us) they have no soul, ought to make one stop and ponder again why one insists on declaring we have a soul and that is who we are and not the biological machine. Do elephants have souls? They are self aware, they recognise themselves in mirrors. Or do you subscribe to a school of thought where it would be impossible to say an elephant is self-aware yet will deny solipsism in the same breath?
Re:That would be the BIG problem referenced (Score:2, Interesting)
Its similar to the question of "what is life?". Just making blood pump through a dead animal does not make it come alive. What exists in our brain to make us "conscious".? Its more than just logic and machine-like things. Its more than just a complex programmable organ.
We have the ability to "learn" and we have the ability to question ourselves, etc. We also have something that even animals do not - the ability to think "morally". We have "free will". And we have an imagination.
Exploring the brain will not uncover the secret to life. The brain is just an organ, like any other. Sure its more complex, but just having a brain and pumping blood through it does not create life.
Its a very good question. However I do not find the possibility of a God scary. That option is actually a LOT more comforting than if there isn't one. If we're fully responsible for our own destiny, then THAT is scary.