Abstract
Many companies have recently started to offer wearable computing devices including glasses, bracelets, and watches. While this technology enables exciting new applications, it also poses new security and privacy concerns. In this work, we explore these implications and analyze the impact of one of the first networked wearable devices—smartwatches—on an academic environment. As a proof of concept, we develop an application for the Pebble smartwatch called ConTest that would allow dishonest students to inconspicuously collaborate on multiple-choice exams in real time, using a cloud-based service, a smartphone, and a client application on a smartwatch. We discuss the broader implications of this technology, suggest hardware and software approaches that can be used to prevent such attacks, and pose questions for future research.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Martin Strauss for insightful guidance and Phil and Jill Migicovsky for early help and feedback. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under contract numbers CNS 1111699 and CNS 1255153.
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© 2014 International Financial Cryptography Association
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Migicovsky, A., Durumeric, Z., Ringenberg, J., Halderman, J.A. (2014). Outsmarting Proctors with Smartwatches: A Case Study on Wearable Computing Security. In: Christin, N., Safavi-Naini, R. (eds) Financial Cryptography and Data Security. FC 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8437. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45472-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45472-5_7
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