Apple’s AirTag Bluetooth anti-lost device was originally designed for individual users, but who would have thought that a researcher would use it to reveal government secrets. According to the latest report, Lilith Wittmann, a researcher with the security team “Zerforchung”, has sent an AirTag to a mysterious “federal authority” in Germany to find its real office – and help prove that it is indeed part of an intelligence agency.
Wittmann claims she discovered that Germany’s little-known Bundesservice Telekommunikation was actually a disguise for a secret intelligence agency. Wittmann details her extremely thorough attempt to justify her suspicions. Some of the steps she detailed are no longer possible to reproduce, such as the initial step of simply looking up a list of federal authorities online.
Through such phone calls, IP searches, and even driving to official buildings, Wittmann worked hard to track down the mysterious federal telecommunications service, which she put forward for multiple reasons, believing that the agency was part of the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) and eventually concluded, There are actually two “camouflage” groups, both secret parts of an intelligence agency called the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Everyone she spoke with denied being a member of the intelligence agency, Wittmann said. So she sent a package with a concealed AirTag and watched via Apple’s “Find it” network as it moved through the sorting center in Berlin to the sorting office in Cologne-Ehrenfeld, before appearing at the Cologne Constitution Protection Office.
That is, AirTags that are eventually sent to a telecommunications authority in one region of Germany appear in the offices of intelligence agencies in another region of the country. Wittmann also joked that the intelligence service could keep the AirTag, “I heard it should be very expensive.