Hackers Stalked Me by Hijacking a Smartwatch for KidsThe watch’s insecurity and the spying it enabled might be expected given the gadget’s pedigree: It’s sold by an obscure company called CJC, costs less than $30, and was made by an equally obscure manufacturer, YiQingTeng Electronics, in Shenzhen, China. More troubling, perhaps, is that the online platform it’s built on—and the one that allowed Stykas and Solferini to so thoroughly hack it—is used by dozens of other brands of smartwatch, many of which have likely been left vulnerable to the same forms of digital stalking.
At the Black Hat cybersecurity conference today, Stykas and Solferini plan to present their findings from analyzing the supply chain and security of more than 70 GPS-enabled watches and car accessories. They found that more than 30 of those geolocation devices use the technology and backend servers of YiQingTeng, also identified by the brand name Wonlex, the name of a partner firm Shenzhen 3G Electronics, or their associated app, SETracker. Another 30-plus brands of tracking devices for cars and kids are all run on another Shenzhen-based platform known as NewGPS2012.
Combined with another major GPS platform known as SinoTrack that sells car trackers and smartwatches, the two researchers found that tens of millions of GPS tracker gadgets came from just three supply chains. All three, the researchers found in their analysis, had significant security flaws—in some cases as simple as a lack of authentication that allowed anyone to access any device—leaving children’s watches vulnerable to tracking by a hacker, location disabling and spoofing, interception and spoofing of text and audio messages sent to them, replacement of emergency contacts with ones a hacker chose, silent audio eavesdropping, as well as photo and video capture for camera-enabled devices. (Once the GPS started working on the smartwatch WIRED tested, the hackers showed that feature, too, could be hijacked to follow the wearer’s every move.)
For some GPS-enabled car accessories, the researchers found they could similarly track the devices’ locations or spoof messages to them that could potentially unlock or disable cars, though the researchers didn’t go so far as to test this out on actual vehicles. They also say they found server-side vulnerabilities that exposed consumer information, would have allowed them to execute their own code on the servers, or even in one case appeared to show that someone else had already gained unauthorized access to the system’s backend.
“Millions of kids are being exposed and vulnerable to exploitation. It’s just catastrophic. It’s really low-hanging fruit for a lot of bad actors,” Stykas says. “Your criminal mind is the only limitation in exploiting those devices.”
The Watches Watching Your Kids
The researchers say they’ve been warning the companies behind all three Shenzhen-based GPS platforms about their vulnerabilities for months. When WIRED reached a representative of SETracker, the person initially claimed in an email that “the issues you mentioned have been resolved long before,” adding that “we attach great importance to the security of Setracker and keep strengthening its security continuously.” When WIRED pointed out that researchers had been able to hack a smartwatch running on SETracker just this week, the person repeated their claim that the issues had been fixed, then asked for evidence of the exploitation, which WIRED provided.
Only today, hours before the researchers’ talk at Black Hat, did the researchers find that their hacking techniques against SETracker’s platform have stopped working—though they’re still not sure if the flaws they found are fully fixed.
Sinotrack and the NewGPS2012 platform didn’t respond to WIRED’s requests for comment, and the researchers say their hacking techniques against those systems still appear to work.
For more than a decade, cybersecurity experts and privacy advocates have warned that cheap, GPS-enabled children’s smartwatches and aftermarket vehicle accessories are riddled with security vulnerabilities that leave kids and drivers susceptible to hacking and tracking. But the sheer number of different brands and models of those devices has often made identifying the truly insecure gadgets feel nearly impossible for consumers.
#Hackers #Stalked #Hijacking #Smartwatch #Kidsgps,surveillance,hacks,privacy,security,cybersecurity,smartwatch,black hat,defcon
The watch’s insecurity and the spying it enabled might be expected given the gadget’s pedigree: It’s sold by an obscure company called CJC, costs less than $30, and was made by an equally obscure manufacturer, YiQingTeng Electronics, in Shenzhen, China. More troubling, perhaps, is that the online platform it’s built on—and the one that allowed Stykas and Solferini to so thoroughly hack it—is used by dozens of other brands of smartwatch, many of which have likely been left vulnerable to the same forms of digital stalking.
At the Black Hat cybersecurity conference today, Stykas and Solferini plan to present their findings from analyzing the supply chain and security of more than 70 GPS-enabled watches and car accessories. They found that more than 30 of those geolocation devices use the technology and backend servers of YiQingTeng, also identified by the brand name Wonlex, the name of a partner firm Shenzhen 3G Electronics, or their associated app, SETracker. Another 30-plus brands of tracking devices for cars and kids are all run on another Shenzhen-based platform known as NewGPS2012.
Combined with another major GPS platform known as SinoTrack that sells car trackers and smartwatches, the two researchers found that tens of millions of GPS tracker gadgets came from just three supply chains. All three, the researchers found in their analysis, had significant security flaws—in some cases as simple as a lack of authentication that allowed anyone to access any device—leaving children’s watches vulnerable to tracking by a hacker, location disabling and spoofing, interception and spoofing of text and audio messages sent to them, replacement of emergency contacts with ones a hacker chose, silent audio eavesdropping, as well as photo and video capture for camera-enabled devices. (Once the GPS started working on the smartwatch WIRED tested, the hackers showed that feature, too, could be hijacked to follow the wearer’s every move.)
For some GPS-enabled car accessories, the researchers found they could similarly track the devices’ locations or spoof messages to them that could potentially unlock or disable cars, though the researchers didn’t go so far as to test this out on actual vehicles. They also say they found server-side vulnerabilities that exposed consumer information, would have allowed them to execute their own code on the servers, or even in one case appeared to show that someone else had already gained unauthorized access to the system’s backend.
“Millions of kids are being exposed and vulnerable to exploitation. It’s just catastrophic. It’s really low-hanging fruit for a lot of bad actors,” Stykas says. “Your criminal mind is the only limitation in exploiting those devices.”
The Watches Watching Your Kids
The researchers say they’ve been warning the companies behind all three Shenzhen-based GPS platforms about their vulnerabilities for months. When WIRED reached a representative of SETracker, the person initially claimed in an email that “the issues you mentioned have been resolved long before,” adding that “we attach great importance to the security of Setracker and keep strengthening its security continuously.” When WIRED pointed out that researchers had been able to hack a smartwatch running on SETracker just this week, the person repeated their claim that the issues had been fixed, then asked for evidence of the exploitation, which WIRED provided.
Only today, hours before the researchers’ talk at Black Hat, did the researchers find that their hacking techniques against SETracker’s platform have stopped working—though they’re still not sure if the flaws they found are fully fixed.
Sinotrack and the NewGPS2012 platform didn’t respond to WIRED’s requests for comment, and the researchers say their hacking techniques against those systems still appear to work.
For more than a decade, cybersecurity experts and privacy advocates have warned that cheap, GPS-enabled children’s smartwatches and aftermarket vehicle accessories are riddled with security vulnerabilities that leave kids and drivers susceptible to hacking and tracking. But the sheer number of different brands and models of those devices has often made identifying the truly insecure gadgets feel nearly impossible for consumers.
![Ford’s new electric truck, ‘Fathom’, starts at ,350 | TechCrunch
Ford’s next-generation electric truck will be called Fathom, and it will start at ,350 when it goes on sale in 2027, the company said on Thursday.
A “destination and delivery” fee will bring that price up to ,945, putting the Fathom just below the ,000 mark that Ford has targeted since it first started talking more openly about the project in 2025.
The truck, when it arrives next year, represents a major bet for Ford. It’s the automaker’s second all-electric truck after the F-150 Lightning (third, if you count the limited-run Ranger EV from the late 1990s). But like many of its peers, the company has dramatically pulled back on its once-ambitious plans to build electric vehicles.
The Fathom is the first vehicle Ford is building on its new “Universal EV Platform,” or UEV, which will power a number of different EVs and involves a brand-new assembly line process meant to cut costs. It’s an attempt by CEO Jim Farley to try and catch up to category leader Tesla, as well as the many Chinese EVs that he’s argued against allowing into the U.S. market — all while building the truck in Louisville, Kentucky.
Deliveries begin in “fall 2027,” and Ford said on Thursday that it won’t reveal the truck until “early 2027,” which is when it will start taking pre-orders.
We do have some details, though. Ford has already said the Fathom will have Apple Maps built into its operating system, and on Thursday, the company said the truck will support Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Notably, it will not support Apple’s next-generation CarPlay Ultra.
The Fathom will have five seats, which is more interior space than a Toyota Rav4; a “large, high-resolution touch screen,” and a “digital car key.” It will be capable of bidirectional power, much like the Lightning and the hybrid F-150.
Every Fathom will also be “BlueCruise-capable,” meaning it will come with the tech integrated, but buyers will likely have to pay extra to enable Ford’s hands-free advanced driver assistance system. The truck is supposed to have a newer, more powerful version of BlueCruise that Ford says will eventually be capable of handling supervised driving from starting point to destination. Eyes-off driving is expected in 2028.
The Fathom’s starting price also only includes the “standard range” lithium iron phosphate battery pack. Ford hasn’t yet said how many miles the truck can drive on a single charge.
Ford said the name represents “a deep understanding of the person who would drive” the truck, and how their “motivations look a little different from the traditional truck customer’s.”
“[T]he name had to do more than sound good. It had to capture a mindset, shifting the focus from specs to a spirit of adaptability,” the company wrote.
Electric trucks have not done terribly well in the U.S.. The Lightning only moved a little more than 10,000 units in its best quarter, and though Tesla’s Cybertruck had a higher peak, it has since crashed out.
Ford is gambling by choosing the truck form factor for its first UEV platform vehicle. But there are some inherent upsides: The Fathom and other vehicles built on the platform will be the first that Ford has designed from the ground up to use electric powertrains. That should mean fewer tradeoffs on range, efficiency, and overall packaging of the vehicle.
Both the Fathom and UEV have been in the works for a few years. It started as a skunkworks project that Farley tasked former Tesla exec Alan Clarke with leading, as TechCrunch first reported in 2024. The team is flush with talent from Rivian, Tesla and Apple’s now-defunct car project, and has purportedly been working in isolation in Los Angeles, separated from the bureaucracy of the rest of the company.
All of this likely contributed to getting the Fathom’s starting price to just under ,000, a major accomplishment in a market where the average new car costs ,000. The truck won’t have a lot of competition in that range — it’s essentially going up against just the spartan, Jeff Bezos-backed Slate pickup, and a few non-truck EVs like the Chevy Bolt.
Ford has found a ton of success with its small, low-cost Maverick pickup, which comes in both internal combustion and hybrid powertrain variants. The Fathom is an attempt to bottle that lightning, without going the way of the Lightning.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Fords #electric #truck #Fathom #starts #TechCrunchelectric trucks,EVs,Ford](https://i0.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Ford-Fathom-Hero-Still-16x9_v2.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&ssl=1 "Ford’s new electric truck, ‘Fathom’, starts at ,350 | TechCrunch
Ford’s next-generation electric truck will be called Fathom, and it will start at ,350 when it goes on sale in 2027, the company said on Thursday.
A “destination and delivery” fee will bring that price up to ,945, putting the Fathom just below the ,000 mark that Ford has targeted since it first started talking more openly about the project in 2025.
The truck, when it arrives next year, represents a major bet for Ford. It’s the automaker’s second all-electric truck after the F-150 Lightning (third, if you count the limited-run Ranger EV from the late 1990s). But like many of its peers, the company has dramatically pulled back on its once-ambitious plans to build electric vehicles.
The Fathom is the first vehicle Ford is building on its new “Universal EV Platform,” or UEV, which will power a number of different EVs and involves a brand-new assembly line process meant to cut costs. It’s an attempt by CEO Jim Farley to try and catch up to category leader Tesla, as well as the many Chinese EVs that he’s argued against allowing into the U.S. market — all while building the truck in Louisville, Kentucky.
Deliveries begin in “fall 2027,” and Ford said on Thursday that it won’t reveal the truck until “early 2027,” which is when it will start taking pre-orders.
We do have some details, though. Ford has already said the Fathom will have Apple Maps built into its operating system, and on Thursday, the company said the truck will support Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Notably, it will not support Apple’s next-generation CarPlay Ultra.
The Fathom will have five seats, which is more interior space than a Toyota Rav4; a “large, high-resolution touch screen,” and a “digital car key.” It will be capable of bidirectional power, much like the Lightning and the hybrid F-150.
Every Fathom will also be “BlueCruise-capable,” meaning it will come with the tech integrated, but buyers will likely have to pay extra to enable Ford’s hands-free advanced driver assistance system. The truck is supposed to have a newer, more powerful version of BlueCruise that Ford says will eventually be capable of handling supervised driving from starting point to destination. Eyes-off driving is expected in 2028.
The Fathom’s starting price also only includes the “standard range” lithium iron phosphate battery pack. Ford hasn’t yet said how many miles the truck can drive on a single charge.
Ford said the name represents “a deep understanding of the person who would drive” the truck, and how their “motivations look a little different from the traditional truck customer’s.”
“[T]he name had to do more than sound good. It had to capture a mindset, shifting the focus from specs to a spirit of adaptability,” the company wrote.
Electric trucks have not done terribly well in the U.S.. The Lightning only moved a little more than 10,000 units in its best quarter, and though Tesla’s Cybertruck had a higher peak, it has since crashed out.
Ford is gambling by choosing the truck form factor for its first UEV platform vehicle. But there are some inherent upsides: The Fathom and other vehicles built on the platform will be the first that Ford has designed from the ground up to use electric powertrains. That should mean fewer tradeoffs on range, efficiency, and overall packaging of the vehicle.
Both the Fathom and UEV have been in the works for a few years. It started as a skunkworks project that Farley tasked former Tesla exec Alan Clarke with leading, as TechCrunch first reported in 2024. The team is flush with talent from Rivian, Tesla and Apple’s now-defunct car project, and has purportedly been working in isolation in Los Angeles, separated from the bureaucracy of the rest of the company.
All of this likely contributed to getting the Fathom’s starting price to just under ,000, a major accomplishment in a market where the average new car costs ,000. The truck won’t have a lot of competition in that range — it’s essentially going up against just the spartan, Jeff Bezos-backed Slate pickup, and a few non-truck EVs like the Chevy Bolt.
Ford has found a ton of success with its small, low-cost Maverick pickup, which comes in both internal combustion and hybrid powertrain variants. The Fathom is an attempt to bottle that lightning, without going the way of the Lightning.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Fords #electric #truck #Fathom #starts #TechCrunchelectric trucks,EVs,Ford")
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