Unhackable data in a box of bacteria: Future of InfoSec?

By Darlene Storm
Created Jan 18 2011 - 11:00am

Students at Hong Kong's Chinese

University may be onto a type of memory
media that could be a truly secure way to
store data -- text, images, music, and
video. It takes up almost no space, can be
encrypted, and is so gross that it's unlikely
many people would attempt to steal it.
That is, if the thief would even consider
searching a refrigerator for massive data
storage inside E. Coli [1] -- the bacteria
responsible for 90% of urinary tract
infections, which can cause food poisoning
and is the reason for many food recalls.
The bacteria can successfully and securely
be used for biostorage, the storage of data
in living things.

[2]According to an AFP report [3], the U.S. national

archives take up more than 500 miles of shelves, but
one gram of bacteria used for storing data could hold
the same amount of information as 450 hard drives
with 2,000 gigabytes (2 TB) each of storage capacity.

"This means you will be able to keep large datasets for

the long term in a box of bacteria in the refrigerator,"
said student instructor Aldrin Yim about the biostorage
project. Also according to Discovery News [4], another
student instructor, Allen Yu said, "Bacteria can't be
hacked. All kinds of computers are vulnerable to electrical failures or data theft. But bacteria are
immune from cyber attacks. You can safeguard the information."

Student researchers spent 10 months developing the project from scratch, reported their
professor Chan King-ming [5]. The team of 11 students from the Biochemistry program at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong [6] were the 2010 gold medalist in MIT's International
Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM [7]) competition. The students describe their
bioencryption project [8] as turning fantasy into reality and even coined a new term of
biocryptography. These students report having high expectations for the future of a
biocomputer; "we believe this could be an industrial standard in handling large scale data
storage in living cells."

Hardy strains of bacteria can be found everywhere. One type of bacteria can even survive
nuclear radiation. The Hong Kong team checks against a master database to make sure their
manipulations have no toxic effects. The biological cryptography could protect from
information leakage and, as Hong Kong University stated [9], herald in a new era of
information security.
The student researchers developed a method to overcome storage capacity limitations by
compressing the data, splitting it into chunks and distributing it between different bacteria cells.
The Declaration of Independence can be stored in 18 bacteria cells. You can try out the team's
modeling demonstration [10] that simulates the required minimum number of bacteria it would
take to store your inputted text message.

In a post-WikiLeaks world, could security professionals latch onto securely storing data in
bacteria cells and mapping the DNA to easily locate specific information? Although a Petri dish
PC may not be anywhere close to market-ready, there may come a day when we want bacteria
in our computers.

Source URL:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/17683/unhackable_data_in_a_box_of_bacteria_stored_in_a_frig_f

Links:
[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/E_coli
[2] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/File:Diverse_e_Coli.png
[3]
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gBcjhGeZrK9o0qUbQkgz1EuEg0qw?
docId=CNG.400a3e587d2193b4c35f133d08db3b96.1e1&hl=en&lr=all
[4] http://news.discovery.com/tech/bacteria-work-as-hard-drives-110110.html
[5] http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/cpr/pressrelease/101124e.htm
[6] http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/english/index.html
[7] http://ung.igem.org/Main_Page
[8] http://2010.igem.org/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK
[9] http://www2.cuhk.edu.hk/cpr/en/press_detail.php?id=887
[10] http://2010.igem.org/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/Model