Cisco predicted that by the year 2020, 50 billion new wearable devices will be connected through the IoT. This increases points of connection exponentially, and that translates into a huge opportunity for hackers.

Demonstrated Hacks

That wearable devices like Fitbits can be be manipulated through acoustic interference was demonstrated by a number of research experiments. It’s true that there are no immediate ramifications of a nefarious nature other than possibly gaming the count of one’s steps, but the researchers do warn of this: “For instance, should one trust the step count from a Fitbit as evidence for an alibi?” How can it be relied upon if it’s possible to inflate the number of steps through a hack?
This is a question of reliable accuracy, but sometimes it is the accuracy itself that poses a problem. Wearables might be picking up accurate information that is traced directly to the individual and so reveal quite a lot.