Secure passwords able to be sent through the body

A team of computer scientists and electrical engineers at the university of Washington have developed a way for the human body to send secure passwords.

The team discovered that by using benign, low-frequency transmissions generated by devices such as fingerprint sensors and touchpads, they were able to transmit data using both the sensors and the human body.

Usually sensors use signals to receive data about the user’s finger. The team created a way to output these signals to correspond to data contained in a password or access code. The data, when entered on a smartphone can travel through a user’s body to a receiver in a device, which can then confirm the person’s identity.

 The technology could benefit medical devices such as glucose monitors or insulin pumps, which require a user’s confirmation, by providing secure key transmissions to confirm their identity.

The transmissions offer a safer way to transmit authentication information. Wireless passwords which can be sent through WiFi or Bluetooth are vulnerable to hackers who can attempt to break the encrypted code. Low-key transmissions below 30 megahertz, travelling through the body however, don’t broadcast over the air, making them safe to use.

The new technology is described in a paper presented in September at the 2016 Association for Computing Machinery's International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing in Germany.

Senior author on the technology and assistant professor of computer science and engineering, Shyam Gollakota, said: "Fingerprint sensors have so far been used as an input device. What is cool is that we've shown for the first time that fingerprint sensors can be re-purposed to send out information that is confined to the body”.