Questions about Motherboard Documentary

Hi there, just saw the motherboard documentary on YouTube, your technology was the most impressive by far, and has so many other uses over the biometric ideas that were also presented, more than just gin safety. I just have a few questions.

  1. I moved on to research your site and understand that the orientation is a factor when it comes to reading the cylindrical implants which make sense. Some questions here:

A) Would it be possible to make the cylindrical implant a little bigger to help with the range a little bit and make them easier to read? Is there possibly other ways to boost the range to be 2 inches or so? Or Maybe different; more exotic or expensive materials or anything of the like that would be possible, but dont exist yet etc or are cost restrictive? Just wondering where this technology could possibly go with more development.

And

B) With the way the chip works being similar to that of other NFC technology. Is it possible for someone to ‘scan’ your ID, without you knowing. Maybe sleeping etc, (I know that they would have to get close to you, and know where the implant is etc) but would it be possible to grab the unique ID, and then spoof the ID & connection? Then copy that to a larger NFC device like an access card, and bam, access your gun, car, safe, etc, or whatever you have secured? – I know that there are a lot of “if’s” in that question, but I am wondering if it is at all possible.

C) Or does the gun reader work like public key and private key style encryption, so without both the public and private keys, its useless?

D) Can the implant be recoded at anytime to help increase security or would a ne implant be needed?

  1. I understand that the NFC implant uses no power at all, and the benefit to this is that it could work at all times when locking a gun etc. But, in the video you had said that when there was a successful read, a pin was moved out of the way in the gun, and allowed it to fire. – Does that mean that the gun has some sort of charging mechanism, or battery that would need to be kept charged to use? Or does firing the gun, essentially charge something in the gun that would allow it to pretty much be used indefiantly, as long as the gun is fired once every X months etc?

Thanks, I look forward to hearing back from people on this.

Hello and welcome :slight_smile:

A) Yes, but getting 2 inches is not likely. Possibly an inch is more likely. Range is not just a factor of the tag size, it is a direct relationship to both antenna designs. The reader antenna design and chip/tag antenna design directly affect performance. I think it would be possible to create a much better reader antenna inside the gun to make reading implants as simple as gripping the gun… no extra effort what so ever.

B) Yes, but this is highly unlikely, and with VivoKey coming soon this will not be an issue since it will support cryptographic functions. The bottom line here is, this technology is not meant to work for every gun owning scenario, it is primarily meant to stop kids from blowing each other’s faces off by accident. The idea of someone sneaking up to you in your sleep and scanning your hand at close range kind of ignores the point that if they were that close and you feel a gun is the relevant tool to deal with the threat, you’re already dead at that point anyway so who cares if they scan your dead hand?

C) VivoKey may help solve this issue since a certificate style mutual authentication could happen.

D) Some of ours cannot, some can, and VivoKey can generate new key pairs.

  1. The design of my gun ties the reader function to the built-in safety. Click the safety switch off, that unlocks the traditional trigger safety and powers up the reader. On successful scan and authorization, the secondary trigger lock I put in place is removed, the scanner powers down, and the gun is clear to fire. Switch the safety back on, and the secondary trigger lock is put back in place, and the whole system shuts down. In this way, the power requirements of the gun are extremely low, so a single charge should last a very long time. Still, the gun does require charging. To solve this, I figure an inductive gun case or charging mat you lay down or install in your gun safe is the answer. Additionally, a “low battery” alert system can alert the owner weeks in advance to a pending battery failure. Finally, the gun owner can choose whether or not to have the gun “fail safe” or “fail secure”, meaning in fail safe mode, if the battery dies the gun remains locked. In fail secure mode, just before the battery dies, the gun is unlocked. This is exactly how secure access doors can be configured, so it made sense to offer this feature for the smart gun.

You will notice that my gun is not set up to lock if/when the implant goes out of range. That is not relevant for the scenarios a smart gun makes the most sense. Keeping some kid or intruder from blasting someone does not require a “hands on” constant authentication process. It only requires the gun be unlocked as soon as the authorized owner picks it up. After that, you better know your hand-to-hand combat if you feel your gun could be taken away from you after it’s unlocked.

Awesome reply, thank you so much.

This is fantastic. Keep up the good work, Amal.