During the presentation of AirTags for tracking frequently lost items, Apple put a lot of emphasis on the privacy and security of the new product in terms of malicious use. After all, being thrown into someone’s backpack, the tag will allow the attacker to literally track down the victim, its movements, residence address and frequently visited places. In this case, Apple has provided a function that will notify any iPhone user about the prolonged presence of someone else’s AirTag.
However, if you use an Android device, nothing like this will happen; and the only way to find out about the presence of an AirTag near you will be quiet sounds lasting 15 seconds; played by the tag after 3 days of inactivity. But you still need to hear them! In theory, this makes it possible to track people without an iPhone for a battery life; which is about a year. And since Apple does not intend to create, together with Google, an analog of the “Find My” network for Android-smartphones, the new AirTags cannot be called other than a “privacy nightmare”.
Apple AirTag was hacked for the first time – it took less than 10 days
Gizchina News of the week
Security researchers managed to hack AirTag in less than 10 days. This was announced by a Twitter user with the nickname Stacksmashing. He managed to replace the base url with the desired one.
He compared a regular AirTag to a hacked one in a separate video. When a hacked tracker is scanned, instead of Apple’s service; it is prompted to go to a site specified by the hacker. This can be used for phishing and other fraudulent activities.
This is not the first security issue with AirTag. Earlier, Washington Post journalist Geoffrey Fowler (Geoffrey Fowler) said that the new trackers can be used to spy on people. To do this, he tied AirTag to a colleague’s smartphone and went for a walk around the city with it. According to him, the device showed his location with amazing accuracy; and when riding a bike, it updated the position on the map every half a block. He believes that such a tracker can be thrown to any person.
The AirTag, even before its official announcement earlier last month, was one of Apple’s most anticipated devices of the past few years. The first messages about a tracker for finding things began to appear back in 2019. According to new data, in the same 2019, Apple actually originally planned to start shipping the device.
