From “Neurosecurity: Security and Privacy for Neural Devices,” by Tamara Denning, Yoky Matsuoka, and Tadayoshi Kohno, which appeared in July in Neurosurgical FOCUS. The authors are computer scientists at the University of Washington.

Future hackers will have no qualms in targeting neural devices. We have already seen vandals place flashing animations on epilepsy support websites, causing patients to have seizures. With neural devices, vandals could take advantage of neural plasticity to make longer-term alterations.

Future prosthetic-limb systems will allow physicians to connect wirelessly to adjust settings. These systems must guard against hackers trying to hijack these signals to take…