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Over the last year of looking at kids GPS tracking watches we have found some staggering issues. With these devices it almost seems that having multiple security issues is the new normal.

While parents and guardians may get a feeling of security from using these devices, our testing and research shows it’s just that, a “feeling”.

A couple of years ago we bought and reviewed a number of smart kids tracker watches, including some Gator watches from TechSixtyFour.

After chatting to our friends at the Norwegian Consumer Council, who we know well through My Friend Cayla, we discovered they were working on exactly the same tech, by complete coincidence!

We decided to pause our project to avoid us duplicating their efforts. Shortly after, the Norwegian Consumers Council published the excellent ‘WatchOut’ research that demonstrated trivial access to kids GPS locations through vulnerable tracker watches, including the Gator.

It received plenty of press coverage and resulted in several kids tracker watches taking swift action to secure their systems.

A year on, we decided to have a look at the Gator watch again to see how their security had improved as a result of their actions.
TL; DR

Guess what: a train wreck. Anyone could access the entire database, including real time child location, name, parents details etc. Not just Gator watches either – the same back end covered multiple brands and tens of thousands of watches

The Gator web backend was passing the user level as a parameter. Changing that value to another number gave super admin access throughout the platform. The system failed to validate that the user had the appropriate permission to take admin control!

This means that an attacker could get full access to all account information and all watch information. They could view any user of the system and any device on the system, including its location. They could manipulate everything and even change users’ emails/passwords to lock them out of their watch.