OK, sensationalistic headlines aside, this is what is actually going on.
Using EEG, you can look for something called a P300 Event Related Potential (ERP). This is a positive deflection from the baseline activity in the brain signals approximately 300 milliseconds after an anticipated event occurs. Note two key facts about this:
1) P300 actually varies by person; it can appear sooner or much later than 300 ms and have different amplitudes. Because of this, a training phase is required to train the classifier.
2) The P300 happens when an event happens the subject is anticipating or recognizes, so they have to be primed in some sense. For instance, the researchers asked subjects to think of an imaginary PIN, then flashed single digits at them one at a time and tried to infer what the first digit of the PIN was by that. Because they were thinking of, say, 1234, when 1 flashed on the screen, a P300 may have been generated.
What the researchers did was interesting, in that they made the case for potential malware in a consumer BCI game. Their accuracy rates weren't that great, however. This is a far far cry from nefarious agents pulling secret info from your brain.
Using EEG, you can look for something called a P300 Event Related Potential (ERP). This is a positive deflection from the baseline activity in the brain signals approximately 300 milliseconds after an anticipated event occurs. Note two key facts about this:
1) P300 actually varies by person; it can appear sooner or much later than 300 ms and have different amplitudes. Because of this, a training phase is required to train the classifier.
2) The P300 happens when an event happens the subject is anticipating or recognizes, so they have to be primed in some sense. For instance, the researchers asked subjects to think of an imaginary PIN, then flashed single digits at them one at a time and tried to infer what the first digit of the PIN was by that. Because they were thinking of, say, 1234, when 1 flashed on the screen, a P300 may have been generated.
What the researchers did was interesting, in that they made the case for potential malware in a consumer BCI game. Their accuracy rates weren't that great, however. This is a far far cry from nefarious agents pulling secret info from your brain.