BEWARE, YOUR SMARTWATCHES CAN STEAL YOUR ATM PIN

A new research in Washington says that wearable devices can give away your passwords. Scientists from Binghamaton University and the Stevens institute of Technology have embedded sensors in wearable technologies, such as Smart- Watches, along with computer algorithm to crack private pins and passwords with 80% accuracy on the first try and more than 90% accuracy after three times. Researchers conducted 5,000 tests on three key-based security systems, including an ATM, with 20 adults wearing a variety of technologies over 11 months. The team was able to record millimeter-level information of fine hand movements from accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers inside the wearable technologies of a hand's pose. Those measurements leads to distance and direction estimations, which the team's "Backward PIN-Sequence Inference Algorithm" used to break codes with alarming accuracy without any contextual information. According to the research team, this is the first technique that reveals personal PINs by exploiting information from wearable devices without the need for contextual information. So, beware.