Hackers Stalked Me by Hijacking a Smartwatch for Kids

Posted by worik 7 hours ago

Comments

Comment by femto 2 hours ago

> made by an equally obscure manufacturer, YiQingTeng Electronics, in Shenzhen, China.

Is this what is meant by "Shenzhen Speed"? Dump all safeguards and get any piece of crap out the door as soon as possible? This comment isn't directed specifically at Shenzhen, as other parts of the world do the same thing and call it "Move fast and break things."

Dropping engineering standards may increase short term profits, but it erodes people's trust in the world around them when everything "sort of works".

There's an argument that this low level continuous corrosion does more long-term damage than obvious safety flaws that are serious enough to prompt corrective action.

Comment by small_scombrus 1 hour ago

> Dump all safeguards and get any piece of crap out the door as soon as possible?

Very few companies seem to get into trouble for knowingly releasing products that are either faulty, insecure, or actively dangerous

Comment by bluefirebrand 2 hours ago

> There's an argument that this low level continuous corrosion does more long-term damage than obvious safety flaws that are serious enough to prompt corrective action.

Unfortunately I just don't see much care being given to the long term well being of society right now. Not by many governments, not by many corporations.. it feels like everyone is in a "get rich by any means, fuck you I got mine" attitude.

It's really sad

Comment by ryandrake 1 hour ago

The Law Of The Land in most lands nowadays is "Take whatever you can by swindling, lying, or cheating. Nobody is stopping you."

Comment by PradeetPatel 5 minutes ago

There's even a term for that in Hindi - Don't be a sucker (bhookha / bhole).

Don't be the person that's naive, easily cheated, and left behind while others move ahead because you refuse to take the optimal course of action.

Comment by BrtByte 1 hour ago

[dead]

Comment by gkanai 2 hours ago

Until the Chinese government penalizes these Chinese companies for these insecure practices, they'll continue to be sold as is. China doesn't need to care about Chinese made products sold for export apparently.

Comment by glaslong 7 minutes ago

Do US markets (Amazon) hold any responsibility for what shady companies and their insecure products they enable to sell here, I wonder? Does our government, for import?

Comment by 1 hour ago

Comment by BrtByte 1 hour ago

I'm not sure this is uniquely a China problem

Comment by rapidaneurism 1 hour ago

I see an opportunity for an import hurdle masquerading as a security compliance mark on all Chinese imports.

I doubt it will be implemented as there are no western cheap gadget industries left to lobby for it, and the big players would prefer the fud of buy cheap be tracked.

Comment by applfanboysbgon 2 hours ago

Why single out the Chinese government? No government anywhere cares about defective software. "Engineering" is certainly not the correct term to apply to this industry.

[1] Yahoo loses all of their 3 billion account credentials https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/732712/0000732712170...

[2] Equifax loses PII of 150 million Americans, including their SSNs https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/refunds/equifax-data-breach-...

[3] AT&T loses SSNs of 73 million customers https://about.att.com/story/2024/addressing-data-set-release...

[4] AT&T loses phone call/texting metadata of 110 million customers https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/732717/0000732717240...

[5] Change Healthcare loses medical records of 200 million Americans https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/special-topics/c...

To someone not drinking your nationalist kool-aid, it looks rather preposterous to make this about the Chinese bogeyman.

Comment by bjelkeman-again 2 hours ago

Yeah. I subscribe to a mailing list from a data security company that sends me a summary of breaches, daily. I know it is in their interest to keep me worried. But they aren’t making these stories up.

Comment by xmprt 1 hour ago

To be fair, in many (maybe all?) of those cases, those companies faced consequences. I highly doubt this company is going to face any consequence for this data breach.

Comment by applfanboysbgon 1 hour ago

AT&T was fined $177 million for one data breach, which represents 12 hours of revenue, and $13 million for the other, which represents 54 minutes of revenue. "Consequences". Right.

Comment by pjmlp 2 hours ago

Yes, which is I am so bullish into having this industry getting liability like everywhere else.

Cybersecurity laws are a good start, however thanks to lobbying it will still take decades.

Comment by Gigachad 1 hour ago

It's only going to get so much worse. Most companies right now are dropping all the standards they still had to ship AI slop code as fast as possible.

Comment by ErroneousBosh 59 minutes ago

> China doesn't need to care about Chinese made products sold for export apparently.

Wait until you hear about this American car companies that makes vehicles so unsafe, they intentionally lock themselves down tight in an accident so the emergency services can't get people out of them, and presumably just have to sit there and burn to death with their rescuers half a metre away.

This is perfectly legal under US law. There are no safety regulations.

Comment by jonahhorowitz 1 hour ago

If you want to buy a smartwatch for your kids, or you want to have your kids wear something you can track, but them an Apple Watch SE. It has cellular and GPS, you can call them, you can see where they are, but they can't do much with it besides call you (and people you approve) and text people on an approved list.

It's private, it's secure, and it works with the stuff you already have.

[0] - https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-for-your-kids/

Comment by ozozozd 1 hour ago

But note that when you set it up in guardian/child mode, Apple - not your service provider - blocks it from international roaming.

Nice little Easter egg for you to only discover when you travel to a different country with your kid, or for your kid to discover alone when they travel! A family size surprise of the worst kind!

It works if you get a local sim card. The hardware is there. Just not allowed to roam.

Comment by ShinyLeftPad 55 minutes ago

My apple watch cannot roam and it's not in guardian mode, it's mobile provider limitation I was told

Comment by BrtByte 1 hour ago

You think you're choosing between 20 different products, but underneath they may all be the same device talking to the same insecure backend. At that point "just research before you buy" isn't really useful advice

Comment by ryandrake 1 hour ago

Buyer Beware has always been a terrible way to live. It guarantees the shittiest products rise to the top because most people do not seriously beware for every purchase they make. As is always the case, regulation and enforcement is what's needed.

Comment by thenthenthen 2 hours ago

Meanwhile in China…https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1017854

Comment by thomasben 1 hour ago

Even if social popularity has always been of high importance in children’s and teens lives (just pause 1 min and try to remember how you were when aged 10 or 12), making a business of out it is quite sad. What a world we live on…

Comment by fhub 3 hours ago

https://archive.is/xNU3i

Comment by Animats 2 hours ago

It's 10 PM. Do you know where your children are? We do.

Comment by Markoff 1 hour ago

flagged

Hackers Stalked Me by Hijacking a Smartwatch for Kids = clickbait title, that never happened, hacker done it in cooperation with the smartwatch owner

Comment by b3lvedere 1 hour ago

I do agree it's very clickbaitey article. In the literal sense it was still stalking/hacking, only with explicit permission and cooperation.

Comment by fsckboy 3 hours ago

the reporter was "hacked" in cooperation with the hacker in order to write the article

Comment by Sabinus 2 hours ago

"Reporter commissions a (successful) penetration test (of cheap Chinese hardware)" isn't quite as catchy I guess

Comment by NewsaHackO 2 hours ago

Journalists have no shame when it comes to making clickbait headlines. Feel like an idiot for falling for it.

Comment by seizethecheese 1 hour ago

Dad was a real newspaper journalist pre-internet and he used to bemoan the headlines the copy editors would come up with.

Comment by iamnothere 2 hours ago

That’s typically how you show that something is vulnerable before it becomes a real problem.

I mean, criticize the headline if you want, but this is pretty standard reporting for this kind of thing. Recent stories on vulnerabilities in networked car systems were handled using the same approach. (It finally got attention, too, even though security researchers had been pointing out the same issues for years.)