Security/privacy of wearable fitness tracking IoT devices

Abstract

As wearable fitness trackers gain widespread acceptance among the general population, there is a concomitant need to ensure that associated privacy and security vulnerabilities are kept to a minimum. We discuss potential vulnerabilities of these trackers, in general, and specific vulnerabilities in one such tracker - Fitbit - identified by Rahman et al. (2013) who then proposed means to address identified vulnerabilities. However, the `fix' has its own vulnerabilities. We discuss possible means to alleviate related issues.