Mind the tracker you wear: a security analysis of wearable health trackers

Rohit Goyal, Nicola Dragoni, Angelo Spognardi

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Wearable tracking devices have gained widespread usage and popularity because of the valuable services they offer, monitoring human's health parameters and, in general, assisting persons to take a better care of themselves. Nevertheless, the security risks associated with such devices can represent a concern among consumers, because of the sensitive information these devices deal with, like sleeping patterns, eating habits, heart rate and so on. In this paper, we analyse the key security and privacy features of two entry level health trackers from leading vendors (Jawbone and Fitbit), exploring possible attack vectors and vulnerabilities at several system levels. The results of the analysis show how these devices are vulnerable to several attacks (perpetrated with consumer-level devices equipped with just bluetooth and Wi-Fi) that can compromise users' data privacy and security, and eventually call the tracker vendors to raise the stakes against such attacks.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 31st ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC’16)
Number of pages6
PublisherACM
Publication date2016
Pages131-136
ISBN (Print)978-1-4503-3739-7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016
Event31st Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing 2016 - Pisa, Italy
Duration: 4 Apr 20168 Apr 2016
Conference number: 31
http://www.sigapp.org/sac/sac2016/

Conference

Conference31st Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing 2016
Number31
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityPisa
Period04/04/201608/04/2016
Internet address

Bibliographical note

In, track on HEALTHCARE: A Growing Scenario for Applied Computing, 2016, ACM.

Keywords

  • Privacy
  • Security
  • Wearable health rackers

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