Data between phone and watch can be easily hacked

Smart devices using Bluetooth technology for data transmission are easily vulnerable by hackers. All your data, be it alerts, SMS, calendar entries, biometric data and others, can be easily compromised as they travel between the devices using Bluetooth.

Bluetooth signals rely on just a 6-digit PIN code for authentication. Data sent and received between the smart devices and your smartphone are carried over Bluetooth and the 6-digit PIN can be easily hacked by brute force.

A 6-digit PIN has just one million possible key combinations, and can be easily hacked within a few minutes.

According to a report on ArsTechnica, researchers from Bitdefender did a concept hack with a Samsung smartwatch connected to a Google Nexus smartphone running on Android L preview edition. Using some readily available hacking tools, they could easily hack through the data connection using the Bluetooth medium. Later, they could monitor every piece of information that was passing between the watch and the phone.

Though the hacking possibility of a Bluetooth signal is not a surprise, the problem is that the growing number of smart devices using the Bluetooth channel could cause a huge security concern. Smart device manufacturers should work towards creating a more secure method of communication between the smart devices. Using a password before pairing could be an option to secure the communication, but having a keyboard on every smart device is almost impossible. A second option would be using the NFC pairing option, but the cost of the devices would increase accordingly. Lastly encrypting the Bluetooth signals with a second layer would be another option to reduce the threat of data hacking.