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Thursday, May 27, 2010

Man Infects Himself with (Computer) Virus

Dr. Mark Gasson, a cybernetics expert at the University of Reading, deliberately infected himself (by way of an RFID chip implanted in his wrist) with a benign computer virus. This was part of an experiment designed to show how implantable bionic devices are susceptible to computer viruses.

The device in Gasson's arm is an RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip that emits a signal and allows him to access certain parts of the University of Reading laboratory, as well as operate his cell phone. In other words, the chip functions as an internal swipe-card.

Gasson and his colleagues then created a virus for the chip. They put it on the chip and Gasson went into the lab and when the lab's computers read the code, the virus implanted itself into the database and began to replicate. This experiment shows that viruses can be transferred wirelessly from implant devices to the computers they communicate with.

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