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.
-- Voice, Dec 07 2012

Hotel lock security is a joke http://www.extremet...ino-microcontroller
[ytk, Dec 07 2012]

From the point of view of the hotel it´s not secure, you could have many copies of the card you provide.
-- piluso, Dec 07 2012


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.

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.
-- ytk, Dec 07 2012


They're exceedingly rare, though.

Anyway, the whole security aspect is sort of moot. There are much easier ways to bypass hotel key card locks (link).
-- ytk, Dec 07 2012


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.
-- ytk, Dec 07 2012



random, halfbakery