Hackers Stalked Me by Hijacking a Smartwatch for Kids

On a rainy New York morning earlier this week, a WIRED reporter strapped to his wrist a lavender and pink plastic child’s smartwatch and headed to work. As he approached his nearby subway station to commute to WIRED’s office, he texted Vangelis Stykas, the Greek security researcher who had shipped him the watch via Amazon, to let him know that he was going into the station and might lose cell signal.

In fact, Stykas had been monitoring the reporter’s location via the watch since the moment he left his apartment. The watch’s GPS feature, intended to let a parent track their child, was malfunctioning, but the wearable device was still picking up and transmitting to a faraway server identifiers from every nearby Wi-Fi network, which allowed Stykas to nonetheless pinpoint the reporter’s exact location as he walked down a particular Brooklyn block.

A WIRED reporter wearing the GPS-enabled smartwatch while holding an umbrella and walking to the subway earlier this week.

When the reporter arrived at WIRED’s Manhattan headquarters half an hour later, Stykas hijacked a feature in the watch that allowed him to silently take a photo from its camera, capturing the moment when the reporter stepped into an elevator. After a few minutes, he took another snap of the reporter at his desk, then, then used a different feature to pick up audio from the watch’s microphone, transmitting it to another researcher, Felipe Solferini, who listened as the reporter’s coworker described his weekend visit to an art exhibition. At no point did the watch show any sign that it was listening, taking photos, or otherwise being hacked.

As WIRED reporter Andy Greenberg entered the elevator at WIRED's New York office, the hackers used the smartwatch to surreptitiously take a photo…