Abstract
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) started being used in clinical scenarios, reaching nowadays new fields such as entertainment or learning. Using BCIs, neuronal activity can be monitored for various purposes, with the study of the central nervous system response to certain stimuli being one of them, being the case of evoked potentials. However, due to the sensitivity of these data, the transmissions must be protected, with blockchain being an interesting approach to ensure the integrity of the data. This work focuses on the visual sense, and its relationship with the P300 evoked potential, where several open challenges related to the privacy of subjects' information and thoughts appear when using BCI. The first and most important challenge is whether it would be possible to extract sensitive information from evoked potentials. This aspect becomes even more challenging and dangerous if the stimuli are generated when the subject is not aware or conscious that they have occurred. There is an important gap in this regard in the literature, with only one work existing dealing with subliminal stimuli and BCI and having an unclear methodology and experiment setup. As a contribution of this paper, a series of experiments, five in total, have been created to study the impact of visual stimuli on the brain tangibly. These experiments have been applied to a heterogeneous group of ten subjects. The experiments show familiar visual stimuli and gradually reduce the sampling time of known images, from supraliminal to subliminal. The study showed that supraliminal visual stimuli produced P300 potentials about 50% of the time on average across all subjects. Reducing the sample time between images degraded the attack, while the impact of subliminal stimuli was not confirmed. Additionally, younger subjects generally presented a shorter response latency. This work corroborates that subjects' sensitive data can be extracted using visual stimuli and P300.
Highlights
Technology is closely linked to our daily lives, making it impossible to think about performing some tasks without direct or indirect help. is is mainly due to the constant evolution of technology and the current trend to make it more user-friendly
New technologies based on computer-human interaction, such as Kinect devices [1] or Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), have gained relevance for the last decades
BCIs provide a bidirectional channel between the brain and external devices, enabling two modes of use [2]
Summary
Technology is closely linked to our daily lives, making it impossible to think about performing some tasks without direct or indirect help. is is mainly due to the constant evolution of technology and the current trend to make it more user-friendly. Related Work is section reviews the existing literature concerning cybersecurity in BCI, studying possible attacks and emphasizing those focused on attacking the integrity of the user’s sensitive information After that, it analyzes the impact of subliminal stimuli from a psychological perspective, indicating how this issue has been approached over the years and how effective these stimuli are. Focusing on possible attacks through visual stimuli [34], Martinovic et al [13] showed four different types of images in their experiment: (1) automated teller machines (ATMs), (2) debit cards, (3) geographical points, and (4) famous people With these images, the authors sought to obtain private information about the user, especially the user’s residence, using the geographic points. Watch a video improved in any of the subjects. is experiment was repeated two more times, and the results showed that the subliminal stimuli did not have any effect
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