Password Pill -- Seminar Topic
Introduction:
Motorola Advanced Technology and Projects Group Chief Regina Dugan disclosed over the weekend at the D11 conference that the tech firm is working on electronic tattoo or implantable chips that would make the human body the tool for identification."Authentication is irritating. So irritating that only about half the people do it even though there's a lot of information about you on your smart phone," said Ms Dugan, who was a former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency head.
Motorola is working with mc10, a relatively unknown tech firm, to develop the flexible tattoo technology or epidermal electronics which is made up of various sensors and gages to track multiple directions, electrical impulses in the skeletal structure or nerves, heart activity, temperature and light.
The most annoying part of the internet is probably the fact that you have to memorize close to a dozen passwords to get to all your bank accounts and credit cards and social media profiles. And if you're lazy and just use one, then it's the worry that if one of those accounts gets hacked, it could easily be all of them.
Motorola thinks it has a solution to the password problem. At Wall Street's annual digital technology conference D11, Motorola announced their plans to create a pill that would serve as a password for all your accounts. What does that mean? You would provide Motorola with your password information and they would create a custom pill that had a tiny electronic chip inside it. That chip would basically turn your entire body into an authentication device, and you would theoretically never have to remember another password in your life. Naturally, the pill would pass through your body in about 24 hours, so you would have to take the pill on a daily basis.
“Electronics are boxy and rigid, and humans are curvy and soft,” Dugan said. So how can a password be more accessible by becoming more like a human body? Perhaps you attach it to the skin as a tattoo, or you swallow it as a pill. And this is less science fiction than reality, at least in Motorola’s lab and on the D11 stage, where Dugan showed off both products.
Working:
MC10 is a company that makes “stretchable circuits” that can be used for skullcaps to detect concussions in sports, or baby thermometers that constantly track an infant’s vitals. In the form of a temporary tattoo, the technology can attach an antenna and sensors directly on the body.
The key MC10 insight is “islands of silicon connected by accordion-like structures to stretch up to 200 percent and still perform,” Dugan said.
Dugan demos the password tattoo.
This was not some obscure research Motorola plucked out of the air. Earlier this year, MC10 completed an $18 million Series C round from investors including Medtronic and North Bridge Venture Partners.
Dugan is also working with a company called Proteus Digital Health that already has FDA clearance for an ingestible sensor as a medical device. She wants to use it for passwords, too.
“This pill has a small chip inside of it, with a switch. It also has what amounts to an inside-out potato battery,” she said. “When you swallow it, the acids in your stomach serve as the electrolyte, and they power it up and the switch goes on and off and it creates an 18-bit ECG-like signal in your body. Essentially, your entire body becomes your authentication token.”
Once swallowed, Dugan said, “it means that my arms are like wires, my hands are like alligator clips — when I touch my phone, my computer, my door, my car, I’m authenticated in. It’s my first super power. I want that.”
Walt Mossberg holds the password pill.
Onstage, Dugan said that it would be medically safe to ingest 30 of these pills every day for the rest of your life, and that the only thing the pill exposes about its swallower is whether or not it has been taken.
“We have demoed this working and authenticating a phone,” added Dugan’s boss, Motorola head Dennis Woodside. “This isn’t stuff that’s going to ship anytime soon, but I think having the boldness to think differently about problems that everybody has everyday is really important for Motorola now.”
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