Dive Brief:

• A team at the University of California-Berkeley is researching ways to idenfity people through their brainwaves -- essentially, by reading their thoughts.
• The technology could be used to replace traditional typed passwords as a security protocol.
• It is among numerous advances being made in the use of biometrics for security.

Dive Insight:

This might seem a little creepy (and perhaps it just is), but researchers are still a considerable distance away from making so-called passthoughts into a widely useful technology. Other biometrics -- such as, say, "reading" the folds of your ears to clear you through security -- appear closer to becoming a reality, CNet reports.

Still, we're talking about a way to literally open doors with your mind. And passthoughts have a significant advantage over other biometric techniques. A high-resolution photo of a fingerprint might fool a scanner, but physical differences in brains and the electrical signals they produce make such spoofing techniques a huge challenge, even if a hacker "thinks" the phrase needed to unlock security, researchers say.