Watch What You Wear: Smartwatches and Sluggish Security

Abstract

There is no doubt that the form factor of devices continues to shrink as evidenced by smartphones and most recently smartwatches. The adoption rate of small computing devices is staggering and needs stronger attention from the cybersecurity and digital forensics communities. In this chapter, we dissect smartwatches. We first present a historical roadmap of smartwatches. We then explore the smartwatch marketplace and outline existing smartwatch hardware, operating systems and software. Next we elaborate on the uses of smartwatches and then discuss the security and forensic implications of smartwatches by reviewing the relevant literature. Lastly, we outline future research directions in smartwatch security and forensics.