"Are Brain-Computer Interface Spellers Secure?"

A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) allows people to use their brain activity to interact with a computer. A team of researchers led by Professor Dongrui Wu from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) explored the security of electroencephalogram (EEG)-based BCI spellers, which enables text entry using EEG signals, helping to restore communication for severely disabled individuals. The examination of P300 and SSVEP spellers revealed that an attacker could cause them to misclassify characters through the generation of tiny adversarial EEG perturbation templates. Adversarial attacks on EEG-based BCI spellers could lead to usability problems, misdiagnosis in clinical applications, and other consequences, posing a threat to patients' safety. This research aims at bringing further attention to the need to strengthen security for BCI systems. This article continues to discuss the findings and next steps of this study on the security of BCI systems. 

ScienMag reports "Are Brain-Computer Interface Spellers Secure?"