Spy the little Spies - Security and Privacy issues of Smart GPS trackers
This work addresses security and privacy risks for users of GPS trackers, particularly in sensitive contexts like child tracking, but it is incremental as it applies standard assessment methods to a specific domain.
The study assessed the security of GPS trackers, revealing multiple security flaws that compromise user privacy and safety, highlighting the need for improved device hardening in critical applications.
Tracking expensive goods and/or targeted individuals with high-tech devices has been of high interest for the last 30 years. More recently, other use cases such as parents tracking their children have become popular. One primary functionality of these devices has been the collection of GPS coordinates of the location of the trackers, and to send these to remote servers through a cellular modem and a SIM card. Reviewing existing devices, it has been observed that beyond simple GPS trackers many devices intend to enclose additional features such as microphones, cameras, or Wi-Fi interfaces enabling advanced spying activities. In this study, we propose to describe the methodology applied to evaluate the security level of GPS trackers with different capabilities. Several security flaws have been discovered during our security assessment highlighting the need of a proper hardening of these devices when used in critical environments.