Apple's new AirTag has been hacked

German hardware hacker Thomas Roth, aka GhidraNinja, posted on Twitter on Saturday (May 8) that he successfully retrieved, modified, and reloaded the AirTag's firmware

When he put the AirTag in "lost mode" and pointed his iPhone at it, the phone's browser was sent to Roth's own website instead of Apple's "Find My Website"

Roth then changed the hacked AirTag to Rickroll him:

Not much

As SlashGear pointed out, it is possible that criminals could distribute a "lost" AirTag and send the iPhone browsers of an unspecified number of people who come across it to a malicious website

However, it will not deliver much for cost-effectiveness unless you have certain high-value people as targets; AirTags are €35 per unit ($42 in US dollars) in Germany and €119 for a pack of four, so Mr Roth has already spent over $100 for the AirTags, which means that he has already spent over $100

That may be so, but that's not what Roth did He broke the AirTag, removed the circuit board, soldered wires in various places on the board, and got a working one

He has yet to reveal the details of how he did it, but a knowledgeable hardware hacker might only need to look at the images Roth posted on Twitter to get a start on replicating his results In particular, he might be able to do so if he can modify the firmware to disable the speaker or prevent the AirTag from emitting the warning sound that begins to sound after the AirTag has been out of range of a paired iPhone for three days

But frankly, it is already fairly easy to secretly track others using AirTag, especially those who are not carrying the latest iPhones

Be able to say that you were the first to hack a new device This is really what motivates many hackers, good, bad, or otherwise