has microsoft created the ultimate public anti-hack?
by rick richardson
technology this week
your computer or tablet screen can easily be visually hacked in public, which allows someone to steal private information. plastic screen coverings are one technique to stop this from happening, as they make it harder for someone to view the document unless they are directly in front of it. microsoft might develop a technology that encrypts text graphically as you read it.
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a recent microsoft patent describes a system that encrypts a document so that only the reader can decipher it. the approach encrypts the document by changing the letters in the text section of the original document. the document is then shown in a private mode using an alpha-blended version that combines the encoded and original copies of the text. next, the system uses eye tracking to show the user the decoded portion of the document at their fixation point and the encoded version at the periphery of their field of vision.
this issue is currently addressed by a wide range of products on the market, from hardware privacy screens to software that uses webcams and eye tracking to let light from the screen enter the eyes of the intended user while blocking light from the screen from entering the eyes of onlookers. they are all limited, though.
because it is challenging to attain 100 percent light efficiency, privacy screens make the display appear dull to the intended user’s eyes. in the meantime, reading the text becomes more challenging when non-fixed portions of the screen are arbitrarily blurred or dimmed – like reading through a telescope.
the ponemon institute claims that visual hacking is a common issue. in 2015, the institute carried out an experiment in the u.s. that showed how simple it was to use visual hacking to obtain confidential firm information. in 2016, 3m supported an enlarged version of this project with offices in china, france, germany, india, japan, south korea and the uk.
according to the 3m investigation, in 91 percent of the worldwide trials, information was visually hacked by an undercover white hat hacker. in nearly half of the global trials, an undercover visual hacker collected information in 15 minutes or less. only 32 percent of the hacker efforts were successful, and 52 percent of the sensitive data was taken from staff computer screens. the outcomes matched those of the smaller study conducted by the ponemon institute.