Smartwatch is a mobile device that can be worn on your wrist. It’s actually pretty neat and has a lot of things you can do with it. But did you know a hacker can steal your ATM PIN code using your smartwatch?

A study from Binghamton University suggest that your smartwatch and other wearable smart devices like fitness tracker can be a tool for an attacker to track your hand motion using it’s built in motion sensor.

Computer Scientist from Stevens Institute of Technology and Binghamton University used an algorithm ( Backward PIN-Sequence Inference ) that can guess your password and PIN with about 80-90% success rate.

This particular algorithm can be used to capture anything you type on an ATM Keypad, even on your computer keyboard and mobile keypads.

According to the researchers, they were able to record millimeter level information of fine-grained hand movements from accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers inside the wearable technologies regardless of a hand’s pose.

Researchers didn’t name the particular wearable mobile device, but they say attackers can record informations by infecting it with malware or by intercepting Bluetooth connection that links your device to your mobile phone.

As of now, researchers still doesn’t have a solid solution against this attack. So we suggest that when entering your PINs and passwords, use your hand that doesn’t have the wearable device attached to it. 😀