Hackers Stalked Me by Hijacking a Smartwatch for Kids
Andy GreenbergMatt BurgessYulia AlmazovaSecurityAug 6, 2026 5:35 PMHackers Stalked Me by Hijacking a Smartwatch for KidsSecurity researchers tracked and eavesdropped on a WIRED reporter using vulnerabilities in a pink plastic smartwatch. Courtesy of Andy GreenbergWhen the reporter arrived at WIRED’s Manhattan headquarters half an hour later, Stykas hijacked a feature in the watch that allowed him to silently take a photo from its camera, capturing the moment when the reporter stepped into an elevator. After a few minutes, he took another snap of the reporter at his desk, then, then used a different feature to pick up audio from the watch’s microphone, transmitting it to another researcher, Felipe Solferini, who listened as the reporter’s coworker described his weekend visit to an art exhibition.
- ▪Andy GreenbergMatt BurgessYulia AlmazovaSecurityAug 6, 2026 5:35 PMHackers Stalked Me by Hijacking a Smartwatch for KidsSecurity researchers tracked and eavesdropped on a WIRED reporter using vulnerabilities in a pink plastic smartwatch.
- ▪Courtesy of Andy GreenbergWhen the reporter arrived at WIRED’s Manhattan headquarters half an hour later, Stykas hijacked a feature in the watch that allowed him to silently take a photo from its camera, capturing the moment when the report
- ▪After a few minutes, he took another snap of the reporter at his desk, then, then used a different feature to pick up audio from the watch’s microphone, transmitting it to another researcher, Felipe Solferini, who listened as the reporter’s
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| Original publisher | WIRED — Security |
| Canonical URL | https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-stalked-me-by-hijacking-a-smartwatch-for-kids/ |
| Publication time | Thu, 06 Aug 2026 21:35:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-06T21:35:41.812Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-06T21:35:41.812Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | KpoHPZsHl9nc · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Andy GreenbergMatt BurgessYulia AlmazovaSecurityAug 6, 2026 5:35 PMHackers Stalked Me by Hijacking a Smartwatch for KidsSecurity researchers tracked and eavesdropped on a WIRED reporter using vulnerabilities in a pink plastic smartwatch. It’s just one piece of a deeply insecure supply chain of GPS-enabled gadgets.Photo-Illustration: Jobanny Cabrera; Getty ImagesCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyOn a rainy New York morning earlier this week, a WIRED reporter strapped to his wrist a lavender and pink plastic child’s smartwatch and headed to work.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at WIRED — Security.
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