Apple Airtag | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Apple and Google have  teamed up  to work on a  draft industry-wide specification  that's designed to tackle safety risks and alert users when they are being tracked without their knowledge or permission using devices like AirTags. "The first-of-its-kind specification will allow Bluetooth location-tracking devices to be compatible with unauthorized tracking detection and alerts across Android and iOS platforms," the companies said in a joint statement. While these trackers are primarily designed to keep tabs on personal belongings like keys, wallets, luggage, and other items, such devices have also been abused by bad actors for  criminal or nefarious purposes , including instances of  stalking, harassment, and theft . The goal is to standardize the alerting mechanisms and minimize opportunities for misuse across Bluetooth location-tracking devices from different vendors. To that end, Samsung, Tile, Chipolo, eufy Security, and Pebblebee have all come on...

Cybersecurity researchers have managed to build a clone of Apple Airtag that circumvents the anti-stalking protection technology built into its Find My Bluetooth-based tracking protocol. The result is a stealth AirTag that can successfully track an iPhone user for over five days without triggering a tracking notification, Positive Security's co-founder Fabian Bräunlein  said  in a deep-dive published last week. Find My is Apple's asset tracking app that allows users to track the GPS location of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS devices, AirPods, AirTags as well as other supported third-party accessories through a connected iCloud account. It also enables users to view the location of others who have opted to share their location. This is far from the first time weaknesses have been uncovered in Apple's Find My system. In March 2021, the Secure Mobile Networking Lab at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany (SEEMO)  disclosed  design and implementation flaws in...

In cybersecurity, confidence is a double-edged sword. Organizations often operate under a false sense of security , believing that patched vulnerabilities, up-to-date tools, polished dashboards, and glowing risk scores guarantee safety. The reality is a bit of a different story. In the real world, checking the right boxes doesn't equal being secure. As Sun Tzu warned, "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." Two and a half millennia later, the concept still holds: your organization's cybersecurity defenses must be strategically validated under real-world conditions to ensure your business's very survival. Today, more than ever, you need Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV) , the essential strategy that's still missing from most security frameworks. The Danger of False Confidence Conventional wisdom suggests that if you've patched known bugs, deployed a stack of well-regarded security tools, and passed the nec...