Neuralink Pairing Patent Protects Against Brain Cyber Attacks

Neuralink wants to protect implants from interference.

Photo of a Neuralink patent
Photo via U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Sign up to uncover the latest in emerging technology.

Neuralink wants to make sure your brain doesn’t get hacked. 

The startup filed a patent for “out-of-band pairing” for a wireless neural implant. Neuralink’s patent essentially details a way to pair a neural implant with an “external device,” such as a phone or computer, without falling victim to “man-in-the-middle attacks.” 

A man-in-the-middle attack is a common security threat in which a bad actor intercepts or alters communication between two devices that are attempting to pair. “When transmitting data from the brain, or transmitting outputs from decoding neural data, security is particularly important,” Neuralink said in the filing. 

First, an implant will receive signals from an external device, either from varying magnetic fields from the external device or via a set of neural signals. The implant then decodes these signals to identify a pairing code, used to authenticate both the external device and the implant.

The implant then performs what’s called a “key exchange” to ensure the pairing codes match; it either accepts or rejects the pairing based on this determination. This process also encrypts communication between the implant and the device, adding an extra layer of security.

After some back and forth with the Food and Drug Administration, Neuralink finally performed the first human trial of its brain-computer interface in January. Though Neuralink said in an April blog post that the procedure went well, some of the threads of the implant retracted from the patient’s brain. Despite the loose threads, the device is reportedly still functional. 

The FDA has since cleared the way for the second trial, which CEO Elon Musk claimed in mid-July would be performed in the coming weeks. Neuralink is working on ways to mitigate the reaction that occurred in the first patient by sculpting the skull to minimize the gap between it and the implant, and potentially inserting threads deeper.

Though Neuralink’s testing is in its early days, Musk has ambitious goals for the startup’s tech, including restoring autonomy to those with “unmet medical needs” and treating conditions like depression and schizophrenia. He even mused on X recently that he thinks “cybernetic superpowers” are likely within reach. These ambitions have notched the company millions in funding last year: It secured a total of $323 million between two rounds. A recent Reuters report claims the company could be worth as much as $8 billion.

While Neuralink has made the most headlines, it’s not the only company working on brain chips: Synchron, a startup backed by funding from tech figureheads Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, has implanted its devices in 10 people and opened a patient registry earlier this year. Precision Neuroscience, a startup founded by an ex-Neuralink executive, raised $41 million last year and deployed more than 4,000 electrodes in a patient’s brain in a successful study in May.

And though this technology is far from commonplace, patents like these may hint that Neuralink is trying to grab as much IP as it can in the nascent space as competition makes headway.