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SPIES Lab, Computer Science and Engineering

Texas A&M University College of Engineering

Wearable Computing

The Comprehensive Survey on the Security of Wearable Computing

Wearable computing is rapidly getting deployed in many – commercial, medical and personal – domains of day-to-day life. Wearable devices appear in various forms, shapes and sizes , including those that are “head-worn” (e.g., glasses and headsets), “eye-worn” (e.g., contact lenses), “wrist-worn” (e.g., watches, bracelets and wrist bands), “feet-worn” (e.g., shoes) and “body-worn” (e.g., e-textiles and smart fabrics), and facilitate a wide variety of applications in many domains of life. Plethora of sensors available in the wearables have created their applications in various sectors including communication, medical, wellness, fitness, business and glamour. However, wearables raise unique security and privacy concerns. For example, they may compromise the privacy of wearers or bystanders, provide unfettered access to sensitive data, enable sensor-based sniffing and side channel attacks, and facilitate hidden plagiarism. On the other hand, Wearables also hold the promise to help enhance the existing security, privacy, and safety paradigms in unique ways while preserving system’s usability. For example, wearable devices could be used to improve the security and usability of the authentication process, and may give rise to improved pedestrian and driver safety systems.
In this survey, first, as a background, we identify a wide range of existing as well as upcoming wearable devices and investigate their broad applications in various domains, such as medical, sports and fitness, and business operation. Second, we provide an exposition of the security and privacy of wearable computing, studying dual aspects, i.e., both attacks and defenses. Third, we provide a comprehensive study of the potential security, privacy and safety enhancements to existing systems based on the emergence of wearable technology. Although several research works have emerged exploring different offensive and defensive uses of wearables, there is a lack of a broad and precise literature review systematizing all those security and privacy aspects and the underlying threat models. This research survey also analyzes current and emerging research trends, and provides directions for future research. Figure below provides a high-level overview of the survey.

A high-level overview of the research survey.

A high-level overview of the research survey.

People

Faculty

  • Nitesh Saxena

Student

  • Prakash Shrestha (PhD student)

Publication

  • An Offensive and Defensive Exposition of Wearable Computing
    Prakash Shrestha and Nitesh Saxena
    In ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 2017.
    [pdf]

Recent News

  • Paper accepted to ACM CCS 2025 July 2, 2025
  • News: Security and Accessibility Gaps in Web Authentication for Blind and Visually Impaired Users June 30, 2025
  • Paper accepted to ICME 2025 June 24, 2025
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  • Journal paper accepted to IEEE TIFS June 19, 2025
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  • Paper accepted to WiSec 2025 May 11, 2025
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  • SPIES Lab Student to Start as an Assistant Professor April 18, 2025
  • Dr. Saxena’s Primer on Secure Communications in News Media March 31, 2025
  • Dr. Saxena recognized with the Dean’s Excellence Award! February 14, 2025
  • Dr. Saxena appointed as the Senior Area Editor, IEEE TIFS February 6, 2025
  • 2 Full Papers Accepted to WWW 2025 January 20, 2025
  • Journal paper accepted to IEEE TMC December 18, 2024
  • New post-doctoral researcher joins the lab December 11, 2024
  • Paper Accepted to ACM Computing Surveys 2024 November 30, 2024

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