Should we be concerned about brainjacking? Yes, absolutely. Today we are highly dependent on various technological devices, and with continued advancement in technology, we are getting used to wireless devices. Sometimes these wireless devices can vulnerable to security threats since any third party or a hacker can easily get a hold of the data and might make modifications to it. This can eventually cause a purely negative impact on the brain of the users of these wireless devices.

What does brainjacking mean?

Brain implants, also technically termed as neural implants, are sensors that are connected to the human brain and attached to an external device. Brain implants are used by doctors worldwide to help disabled people move their prosthetics. It is generally used by doctors to help patients with Parkinson’s disease, chronic pain, tremor, and muscle spasms. Brainjacking is the process of hacking the brain implants of a person in an unauthorized manner. Precautions should be taken by the developers of brain implants, as early as possible, to ensure the security of these technological neural devices.

What are the risks of brainjacking?

The invention of brain implants has actually helped a number of people around the world since it was launched. According to Medtronic, which is one of the biggest manufacturers of brain implants, 80,000 people around the world make use of brain implants. And there is an increase in the number of users by each passing day. According to a prediction done by experts, the market value of brain implants is expected to boost up to $8.29 billion by 2025, which clearly implies that more number of people are expected to utilize the brain implants in the near future. But with the increase in the number of people using it, there is a high possibility that the neural implants’ wireless system could be hacked by a hacker, and he might modify the settings of the implant, thus causing harm to the patients connected to it. Based on the research conducted by Oxford Functional Neurosurgery, brain implants once hacked by a hacker can potentially result in an increase in pain, damage in tissue, alteration in impulse control, and undesirable mental conditioning. Similarly, brain implants can be secretly hacked by an attacker to manipulate the mind of the user. Since scientists have already predicted that an attacker can possibly hack the brain of a person in the next five years and could rewrite memory.

Brainjacking can, thus, turn out to be a serious threat to cybersecurity, and if preventive measures are not developed, then it could possibly put the health and lives of many at risk.

So, along with the development of brain implants system, precautions should be taken by the developers in order to protect brain implant-users from any type of hacking. By simply considering the anatomy of cyber attacks, the developers of brain implants can try to figure out the techniques to minimize cyber threats like brainjacking.