Psychic Hacking: Using Remote Viewing to Steal Computer Data
by Scotch Wichmann
www.psychicexperiment.org

Abstract

Declassified documents from the U.S. Government's Stargate project during the 1970s and 1980s show that remote viewers can accurately describe foreign military installations, missile silos, lost aircraft, planetary features not yet discovered by NASA, and locations of people from thousands of miles away. One question went unanswered, however: could remote viewing also be used to steal data from supposedly secure computers? This paper presents exploratory experiment results demonstrating that "psychic hacking" is possible. Following established Stargate research protocols described by Puthoff, Targ, and others, a double-blind experiment hosted on the Internet over a 2-week period allowed participants to try using their psychic powers to describe picture, video, ATM PIN, and passphrase targets stored on laptop computers located in Los Angeles. 146 remote participants from 10 countries generated 584 experiment rounds. Successful participants bypassed security defenses to describe many unique details about the targets from miles away. Statistically significant results (alpha=0.05) were observed for picture rounds (p=0.000597, ES=1.075) and video rounds (p=0.000911, ES=1.131). ATM PIN results were significant for 3 digits in any order (p=4.118x10^-6, ES=0.788) and 2 digits in any order (p=7.84x10^-6, ES=0.763). The experiment's security implications are far-reaching, since physical distance, attenuating structures, visual shielding, network air gaps, data obfuscation, strict file permissions, and password protection failed to prevent data theft.