Today I learned Motorola was once developing a password pill that turns your body into an authentication token: 'We have demoed this working and authenticating a phone'

Today I learned Motorola was once developing a password pill that turns your body into an authentication token: ‘We have demoed this working and authenticating a phone’ | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these Games Discord is rolling out facial scanning and ID checks globally in March for users who don’t want to be locked into a ‘teen-appropriate experience’ Hardware ‘I do not have enough self-preservation. Send help’: This streamer hacked her own balance to ‘feel’ racing games Adventure The world’s first ‘standardized gaming test’ will see if you can beat an ’80s adventure game without a walkthrough—and it’ll even monitor you over a webcam to make sure you don’t cheat Hardware If this new battery breakthrough goes mainstream, you may be allowed to use your external charger on flights again Hardware ‘Sick, bro, nice vape’ is what I’d say to the people that turned a vape into a synth ocarina Hardware Engineers builds Arduino-led game console from a fidget clicker and I want to fidget with it so badly AI AI-assisted hacking group hits targets with a complicated ‘social engineering’ scam that involves deepfaked CEOs, spoofed Zoom calls and a malicious troubleshooting program AI A human software engineer rejected an AI agent’s code change request, only for the AI agent to retaliate by publishing an ‘angry’ blog about him AI One-third of consumers don’t want AI on their devices, report finds, and it’s not because they don’t understand it: They just don’t need it AI Poets are now cybersecurity threats: Researchers used ‘adversarial poetry’ to trick AI into ignoring its safety guard rails and it worked 62% of the time AI There’s a hot new personal AI in town that can send texts, check your calendar, come up with business ideas, spend your money and leak your data—all depends on how you use it AI Grok AI temporarily so sycophantic it claims Elon Musk is the best at drinking pee, and other things I’m not going to put in a headline, you can’t make me AI Google has published a list of ways AI is currently being used by threat actors to more efficiently hack you Hardware Dell’s CES 2026 chat was the most pleasingly un-AI briefing I’ve had in maybe 5 years AI Between bots calling themselves ‘Mecha-Hitler’ and 95% of businesses realising they don’t know the point of AI, 2025 was the year the tech lost its shine even for the most blinkered execs PopularNEW: PC Gamer Clips!Arc RaidersBest PC gearFalloutGame Quizzes Hardware Today I learned Motorola was once developing a password pill that turns your body into an authentication token: ‘We have demoed this working and authenticating a phone’ News By James Bentley published 16 February 2026 This was part of Motorola’s goal to ‘fix’ the “mechanical mismatch between humans and electronics.” When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Getty Images / South China Morning Post) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter PC Gamer Get the PC Gamer Newsletter Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday GamesRadar+ Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you’re going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Signup + Every Thursday GTA 6 O’clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O’clock experts. Signup + Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what’s on the horizon. Signup + Every Thursday The Setup Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more. Signup + Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo’s new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play. Signup + Every Saturday The Watchlist Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter Did you know that, for a brief few years, Motorola (or more accurately, Motorola Mobility) was owned by Google? If you didn’t know that, then you likely also don’t know that, in those two cursed years, Motorola showed off a password pill you swallow as a form of password authentication. Yeah, 2013 was weird.As brought to my attention by Hackaday, this password pill would house a small chip that would dissolve in your stomach and emit an 18-bit ECG-style signal from your body. Regina Dugan, the then-research head at Motorola, said, “Essentially, your entire body becomes your authentication token.”Reportedly, one could have up to 30 of the pills every day, and they were apparently non-toxic, too. That’s a relief. Related articles Audio devices that use Google’s Fast Pair Bluetooth tech are vulnerable to hacks that could track location or listen to the mic, according to researchers Apple’s 1991 Macintosh shipped with a bug that should’ve stopped it from booting, but no one ever knew because an undocumented CPU trick ‘almost too crazy to be true’ miraculously made it work Poets are now cybersecurity threats: Researchers used ‘adversarial poetry’ to trick AI into ignoring its safety guard rails and it worked 62% of the time According to All Things D, the only thing tests could determine was whether you had them. Then-Motorola head Dennis Woodside said “This isn’t