Your body is your internet — and now it can’t be hacked

Science Daily  March 12, 2019
Radiative communication using electro-magnetic fields amongst the wearable and implantable devices act as the backbone for information exchange around a human body enabling applications in the fields of connected healthcare, virtual reality etc. As EM signals propagate in all directions, they allow an eavesdropper to intercept the information. Researchers at Purdue University have developed a method called Electro-Quasistatic Human Body Communication (EQS-HBC) for localizing signals within the body using low-frequency carrier-less transmission, thereby making it extremely difficult for a nearby eavesdropper to intercept critical private data. Detailed experiment reveals that the quasi-static leakage due to the on-body EQS-HBC transmitter human body interface is detectable up to <0.15 m, whereas the human body alone leaks only up to ~0.01 m, compared to >5 m detection range for on-body EM wireless communication, highlighting the underlying advantage of EQS-HBC to enable covert communication…read more. Open Access TECNICAL ARTICLE