Vulnerability Analysis and Exploitation Attacks on Smart Wearable Devices

Wearable devices are becoming more popular these days due to its unique features and its effectiveness. The evolution of Internet of Things (IoT) that combined health care devices and sensors has entirely changed the scenario in the healthcare infrastructure. This innovation will confidently improve the existing healthcare facilities and practices due to the continuous observing of patient’s health even in the remote places. Regardless of their effectiveness, IoT devices are insecure and are vulnerable to security threats that should need to be overcome. The main issue is to protect from outside entities or attacks that may obstruct the advancement and put the individual’s information at risk. This study focuses on outlining the vulnerabilities focusing on smartwatches in the healthcare IoT domain. Furthermore, it has been observed that a limited Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) based smartwatches has a very weak or no security defense system making these devices vulnerable to various security threats such as Brute-force attacks, Man-in-The-Middle (MiTM) attacks, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, and Phishing. Experimental testing has been performed to test the vulnerabilities in smartwatch devices to verify the data integrity concerns. By using Bluetooth sniffing tools, the security of the smart wearable devices has been tested to identify its weaknesses and to target the BLE devices. Attempts have been made to tamper its parameters by gaining access to the devices through Bluetooth connection. The overall result reveals that these devices are vulnerable to different exploits. This study provides the foundation to assess possible vulnerabilities in smart wearable devices. Furthermore, it highlights the loopholes existed in these devices which can be exploited.