Scientist deems computer viruses to be kryptonite for cyborgs

Years ago, University of Reading professor Kevin Warwick claimed to have become the world’s first cyborg after implanting a functional RFID chip into his arm. Now in a turn of events practically tailored for a bad made-for-TV sci-fi movie, his colleague Dr. Mark Gasson (pictured at right) has reached a finding that he believes could spell doom for cyborgs like Warwick: Computer implants can be infected by viruses.

Gasson has managed to dupe media outlets into echoing his claim that he’s the first person in the world “to be infected by a computer virus.” In reality, however, Gasson is the merely first person silly enough to implant an infected computer chip (another RFID chip) into himself, then boast of his achievement to the world.

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The chip in question was one he used to activate secure access to the university, as well as his mobile phone. He reports that “once infected, the chip corrupted the main system used to communicate with it. Should other devices have been connected to the system, the virus would have been passed on.”

The average IT person would be utterly unsurprised by these results. Without security mechanisms in place, viruses can spread from infected devices to other systems via wireless (or wired) technologies. It doesn’t really matter if the infected chip is stuffed in your pocket, implanted in your hand, or inserted into any other portion of your anatomy.

Embracing a leap in logic’s that taller than a building, the scientist concludes that the implications of his experiments are staggering in the context of implants — and not just today’s medical implants, such as pacemakers or hearing devices. He’s thinking ahead to a future when, as he predicts, “we all become part machine as we look to enhance ourselves.”

He’s no doubt thinking of the day we have Google chips in our brains, lasers in our eyes, and helicopter rotors that emerge from our heads à la Inspector Gadget.

The threat, of course, is that the Dr. Claws of the world will be able to employ savvy hackers who will devise clever ways to somehow infect their targets’ Bluetooth-enabled, Internet-enabled, or otherwise scannable implants with viruses, resulting in a computer viral epidemic of swine flu-like proportions.

However, he couldn’t have reached that conclusion without, again, infecting an RFID chip and implanting it in his hand — and keeping it there for a year, despite it being such a “surprisingly violating experience because the implant is so intimately connected to me but the situation is potentially out of my control.”

“Out of control” seems about right.

This article, “Scientist deems computer viruses to be kryptonite for cyborgs,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog.