Brain implants serve as potential hotspots for fraudsters and hackers, highlighting the healthcare industry’s ever-evolving cyber threats.
Elon Musk recently discussed the prospect of a future in which humans have brain implants to upgrade their brains for purposes such as playing games or listening to music. To heal neurological ailments and trauma, the Neuralink computer chip brain implant offers to link the body’s muscles with a machine. Without question, this technology is exciting, but it also raises some serious security issues.
Bio-implants, according to experts, are more vulnerable to dangerous cyber-attacks, making them a new sport for hackers. In 2016, Johnson & Johnson issued a public alert stating that the company has uncovered a harmful security vulnerability in their insulin pumps that might allow fraudsters to modify dosages remotely.
Scientists are concerned that an attack on the human brain, often known as brain jacking, could corrupt the brain implants, as the human brain acts as the CPU for the body and thought-action processes.
According to studies, the frequency of brain-jacking cases is expected to skyrocket in the next years.
Every linked end device in today’s hyper-connected world can be entirely hijacked; brain jacking poses a serious threat to individuals even before brain implants become commercially available.
Belgian researchers discovered in 2018 that a neurostimulator, a wireless brain implant, may be easily hacked. They revealed that through remote exploitation, cybercriminals might cause sensory denial, impairment, or even death by altering voltage levels. Such studies show how cybercriminals can use a modest brain implant for malevolent goals in unanticipated ways.
Hackers can attack brain implants thanks to the precise control of the brain and the wireless control of stimulators. The attackers might theoretically cause behavioral changes such as pathological gambling or hypersexuality or even exert a limited level of control over the patient’s behavior in order to reinforce particular behaviors.
Blind attacks, such as emptying implant batteries, stopping stimulation, causing tissue injury, and data theft, can all be the consequence of criminal criminals. It could also be utilized to carry out targeted attacks, such as altering impulse control, impairing motor function, inducing pain, changing emotions or affect, and modulating the reward system. These hacks would be difficult to counter because they would necessitate the capacity to watch the victim, as well as a high level of technological expertise.
While the potential of brain implants appears to be enormous, a single episode of brain jacking can tarnish the technology’s brand, expectations, and face, raising concerns about its safety and utility.
As a result, it’s critical to fix this problem before harmful chips reach the mass market. To prevent brain jacking, healthcare giants must strengthen their cybersecurity safeguards, which include identity and access management, patching, encryption, and maintaining the security of brain implants. Clinicians and patients must be taught how to take certain measures in the face of such incredibly difficult attacks.
Like this post? Checkout our Featured Stories Section
