Transporting/storing information within the human body (other than brain)
This is for a science fiction story I'm writing. Are there ways to transport information like a book, or a computer program, within the human body (not in the brain)? Say, by storing the information using vaccination, and then to read back the information, perhaps doing a blood test...
The basic story idea being that transmitting information electronically has security risks, so the human body is used to store information... people get to whatever destination and then have the information read from their bodies. Johnny Mnemonic was basically this idea but with the information being stored in the brain. I'm wondering if there are other ways.
I've heard of DNA memory.
How far into the future is something like I'm describing above possible? Are there current technologies that can potentially do the above.
Thanks for any information.
EDIT: Thanks everyone for the great responses. Ideally I was looking for something that a living person could transport safely, so perhaps DNA is not a good option.
The story involves someone infiltrating and trying to take down a company that isolates itself electronically... the person goes in, carrying some type of 'computer virus' stored in his body biologically. What I was thinking was... in the future, perhaps biometric scanning will be more extensive... and perhaps during the company's standard biometric scan of people entering, the computer virus could be transported onto the company's computers. I know it's really far-fetched (reminds me of the Independence Day scene). Trying to see if I can make this plausible.
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1 answer
With regard to your edit of using the biological scanners to infect a computer system...
In the movie Gattaca people are identified every day when entering work by a blood/dna scan.
The protagonist takes a small sample of blood from the guy that's helping him and puts it in an artificial blister on his fingertip. Then he presses it to the scanner, which samples the blood in the blister and allows him access.
This is how you could infect the system.
With enough knowledge on how the scanner software works, you could create a retrovirus that would rewrite DNA in white blood cells with the scanner exploit and virus.
Inject the retrovirus into a test animal, and then harvest some blood.
Put the blood into a bubble of artificial skin on a finger tip, and then go to the location to scan it.
It doesn't have to pass the scan, just read the DNA.
The exploit in the DNA could cause a buffer overflow, and write the virus to memory. The virus could then alter records giving you access to the areas that you want.
Then you just come back the next day and walk in like you own the place.
Edit:
With knowledge of how the scanner works, there is also the possibility of finding exploits to hack other kinds of scanners: Finger print, retina, etc.
Maybe a contact lens or something, though the amount of data that could be stored would be a lot less than DNA.
Edit 2:
If you still wanted to smuggle information out, you could implant something that looked like a pacemaker. Pacemakers use a wireless device to program them. Something similar could be used to write data to a implanted device, and since it's disguised as a pacemaker no security should pay any amount of attention to it. Even if they decide to x-ray you to see if you swallowed something like a drug mule.
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