Kieron Ivy Turk – Technical Tactics Targeting Tech-Abuse
Kieron Ivy Turk, a PhD student at the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge, presents ‘Technical Tactics Targeting Tech-Abuse: Tales of AirTag and IoT Misuse’ as part of the Controversies in the Data Society Seminar Series 2018-2025.
Abstract
Technology is now near-universal in domestic abuse cases, misused for a wide array of malicious purposes including stalking, manipulation, and harassment. Despite this, there exist very few real-world defences against common forms of technology-facilitated abuse. In this seminar, Kieron Ivy (either name, they/she) explores the abuse of AirTags and similar devices for stalking, the anti-stalking features created in response, and a “gamified” study involving the Assassins’ Guild student society that identified the many shortcomings of these protective measures. Following her study, a collaborative standard between Apple and Google was announced to universally improve unwanted tracker detection for all.
Taking inspiration from this tale, Ivy investigates forms of Internet of Things (IoT) abuse through an “abusability” study. They find a range of abusable features of multiple IoT devices, locating early intervention opportunities to prevent the misuse of these systems.
Speaker
Kieron is a PhD student at the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge, studying interactions between technology and domestic abuse. This follows two main paths: making it safer for victim-survivors to access support, and creating/improving technical interventions for specific abuses of technology. He is supervised by Alice Hutchings, and part of the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre.
Recommended Reading
- Kieron Ivy Turk and Alice Hutchings. 2024. Stop Following Me! Evaluating the Malicious Uses of Personal Item Tracking Devices and Their Anti-Stalking Features. In Proceedings of the 2024 European Symposium on Usable Security (EuroUSEC ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 277–289. https://doi.org/10.1145/3688459.3688477 (Open access: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~kst36/documents/stop-following-me.pdf)
- Alexander Heinrich, Niklas Bittner, and Matthias Hollick. AirGuard – Protecting Android users from stalking attacks by Apple Find My devices. https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.11813, 2022.
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This video of a seminar at the University of Edinburgh is available under a Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives 4.0 licence.
Header Image: Screenshot of title card from videos
