h a l f b a k e r yThere's no money in it.
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For use in hotel rooms this lock registers a hash of any
magnetic stripe card used. The same card can be used as a
key until deregistered by hotel staff. To prevent a would-be burglar from stealing the users wallet and trying them all it
would require front-desk intervention if the wrong key is
used
, say, three times.
Prevents accidental key theft and
makes it harder to burgle.
Hotel lock security is a joke
http://www.extremet...ino-microcontroller [ytk, Dec 07 2012]
[link]
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From the point of view of the hotel it´s not secure, you could have many copies of the card you provide. |
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The problem is that locks in a hotel aren't centrally
connected, so making sure that it's deregistered
would be difficult. The way the card keys generally
work is the expiration time and date is programmed
into the card itself, so the lock can't be
reprogrammed remotely. |
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Interestingly, I've seen this exact technology used in
hotel in-room safes, so they clearly could
implement this if they wanted to, but there are
good reasons not to do so. |
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They're exceedingly rare, though. |
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Anyway, the whole security aspect is sort of moot.
There are much easier ways to bypass hotel key card
locks (link). |
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I'm pretty sure that Cody Brocious (the hacker) was
the first one to discover this (that we know of) back
in July, and it
was his public release of the information that
touched off the whole brouhaha. If the BBC did a
story on this security flaw, it was probably as a result
of it being exposed, not the other way around. |
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