Microsoft is working to create a physical encrypting system that can encrypt and decrypt a document in real-time based on where the user’s eyes are looking. The technique is described in a new patent, which explains that it modifies letters in the text portion of the original document to help encrypt the content and keep people from visually hacking you in public spaces.
While we have seen some other notable attempts to block visual hacking—like privacy screens on smartphones—they are often dull and do not actually provide any proper security. With Microsoft’s system, though, the text in the documents would actually be encrypted using an alpha-blended version of the document.
This would blend the original and encoded versions of the document. From there, the physical encrypting system will track the user’s eyes using eye tracking and webcams that allow light from the screen to reach the intended user’s eyes. The eye tracking can then trace where the user is looking and unencrypt the text as they read.
The system is designed to prevent the light from reaching a bystander’s eyes, thus providing a higher level of security for the users. However, there are some limitations. For starters, privacy screens typically block out a good bit of the light, making the screen duller to look at.
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Additionally, blurring or scrambling the text without any reason or pattern will make it more difficult for the intended user to read, thus making them less likely to utilize such systems. Visual hacking is a very real problem, and finding new ways to protect against it—like this physical encrypting system—is extremely important for cybersecurity specialists right now.
It is unclear if the system described in Microsoft’s patent will indeed come to fruition or if it will fall to the wayside like so many other patents before it. If it does get created, perhaps it will bring more safety to user’s devices all around the world and help cut down on visual hacking overall. Of course, to do that, you also have to get people to adopt it, which just might prove to be the hardest part.