Google glass and other smartglasses may soon be a method of protecting communications.
Until now, when augmented reality glasses were placed in the spotlight, it was usually because people were complaining about the security problems that they feel with regards to these devices, but that may be about to change.
A group of researchers now believe that smartglasses could make communications encryption even easier.
The security issues that have been brought up when it comes to augmented reality glasses is primarily in one area. It is that people around the wearer feel that their privacy is being threatened because it is impossible for them to know when they are being photographed or video recorded. That said, a team of researchers is suggesting that using smartglasses may be the key to boosting security in a different and entirely unique way.
Augmented reality glasses could decrypt sensitive data exclusively in the wearer’s field of vision.
This would prevent sensitive data from ever having to be decrypted on a computer screen, which could be seen by many people. It would provide an entirely new type of communication that is entirely effortless in decrypting the encrypted.
The research team is from the University of North Carolina and it has already come up with an experimental system that they have called “visual cryptography” which has been created in order to be able to share an encrypted secret message with someone wearing smartglasses. To the naked eye, a computer screen would appear to be displaying black and white static in random ways. However, when viewed through the AR glasses, it would be possible to bring together the black images and the white images through an encryption key that would display a message that can be read only by the wearers.
In this way, the system would be able to give someone the ability to unscramble text that had been encrypted, without the risk of having someone spy on what they were reading, over their shoulders. That is the case both in person or over video cameras that happen to be pointed at a desk in a way that a computer screen could be read. Since the computer screen doesn’t do the decrypting, it is only the augmented reality glasses that would display the secret information.
