I Took Apart The New Airtag 2 And Found A Serious Flaw In Apple's Popular Tracker

It took maine little than 2 minutes to disable nan speaker connected Apple's caller AirTag. 

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• Stalkers tin disable AirTag speakers to make them harder to find.
• I abnormal nan speaker successful 2 minutes pinch basal tools.
• Apple could still push an update to observe tampering.

I emotion Apple AirTags. I person a batch of them successful use, and they prevention maine nary extremity of hassles erstwhile I've put my keys down location stupid, arsenic good arsenic nary extremity of interest erstwhile traveling.

They are, without doubt, nan champion finder tags connected nan market.

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But I besides understand that they tin beryllium utilized for nefarious purposes. While Apple (and Google) person gone a agelong measurement to thief forestall nan tags from being utilized to stalk people, modified hardware still presents a problem. My investigations propose that there's rather a marketplace for locator tags -- particularly AirTags -- that person been modified. The astir communal modification is to disable nan speaker.

I'm not saying that modifying an AirTag is ever wrong, and I tin spot reasons why people mightiness want an AirTag successful a different shape aliases pinch nan speaker disabled.

Also: Modified AirTags airs awesome privateness concerns, particularly for Android users

But a silenced AirTag does make it easier to surreptitiously way people.

I'd hoped that Apple would person taken nan opportunity to make nan newer AirTags harder to modify. Even a small epoxy resin would spell a agelong way.

Brand caller AirTag... fresh for an operation!

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET

Talk is cheap, truthful I bought a battalion of nan new AirTags and went to work, taking 1 apart. I gave nan AirTag a bully chance because I decided that I wasn't going to spell astir opening nan AirTag for illustration I would if I was doing it correct (with due tools, solvents, and a power gun) and went astatine it pinch 1 instrumentality -- a spudger.

A spudger made short activity of getting into nan courage of nan AirTag.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET

I'm not going to springiness you step-by-step instructions but I was capable to easy unfastened and disable nan AirTag's speaker successful minutes. 

The speaker was easy to disable. The full process, from unboxing to putting nan AirTag backmost together took 2 minutes. 

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET

But would nan AirTag spell backmost together again?

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Cut a short communicative moreover shorter, it popped backmost together nary problem.

One past thing: would nan tag work? I fitted nan battery, and nan tag burst silently to life.

The modfied AirTag worked fine.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET

And nan full process took 2 minutes, and each I utilized was nan spudger.

So Apple decidedly hasn't made AirTags harder to tamper with. If anything, these caller ones consciousness easier to get into.

But... Apple mightiness beryllium capable to present a firmware update that could observe nan truth that nan speaker has been trim by adding codification that monitors nan existent crossed nan speaker and looks for a business wherever nan speaker is being activated but nary existent flows crossed it. This could beryllium utilized to render modified tags useless.

With this successful mind, I've kept my modified tag to spot if 1 time it stops moving aliases throws up immoderate type of error.