Apple AirTag Loophole Could Pose Serious Risk to Online Security, Researcher Finds

Apple’s Bluetooth-based merchandise tracker AirTags was launched final month after plenty of hypothesis and rumours across the machine. Within just a few weeks of its launch, the Apple AirTag is discovered to have some safety loopholes that might permit hackers to modify its firmware. A safety researcher on Twitter claimed that he was ready to modify a default NFC hyperlink on the AirTag by reflashing its microcontroller. The safety researcher demonstrated the loopholes by hacking the AirTag utilizing reverse engineering. It allowed him to tweak the performance of the AirTag and put a customized NFC hyperlink when the AirTag is in Lost Mode. This, accoring to reviews, seems to be the primary “jailbreak” of the AirTag. The German security researcher Thomas Roth, who goes by the name “stacksmashing” on Twitter, mentioned that he was ready to hack into the AirTag by breaking into its microcontroller.

The modifications made by Roth allowed him to tweak the performance of the AirTag and put a customized NFC hyperlink when it’s within the Lost Mode. Roth even posted a video on Twitter to present how he can present a customized hyperlink as a substitute of the default notification which is linked to discovered.app.com web site. The hackers might leverage this loophole to goal those that discovered a misplaced AirTag to malicious web sites, as a substitute of displaying the knowledge of the consumer. Roth, nonetheless, mentioned that it took him hours to make these modifications and that he even bricked a few AirTags earlier than reaching success.