My apartment complex used to be a hotel and still has the doors. Can I hack the key cards unlock?

Grass, 2 months ago

I think I saw a headline about some hacker convention in Vegas where they did this. Might have a basic dumbed down explanation common to articles about hacks.

slazer2au, 2 months ago

The way they did it is not trivial. They disassembled the hotel management software, found an exploitable bug, and managed to write that bug into a card. They are not releasing the code as the vendor says after a year only around 30% of the devices are patched.

As card readers dont have internet connectivity fixing them is a slow process.

Grass, 2 months ago

Oh thanks for the details. It wasn’t something I felt compelled to read and just vaguely recalled existing. I’m slightly surprised they don’t have internet these days. Obviously it would be an entire extra can of worms for security but manually patching each one sounds awful. I also saw in another comment someone said they are battery powered which makes it an even less appealing system. I’d feel inclined to make them bolt the other way and have the card and lock unit on the frame side and have them connected to a wired network routed through the wall and powered by mains also. Maybe there’s some super obvious reason locks go from the door to the wall that I never thought to look in to though.

Hildegarde, 2 months ago

Hotel locks are usually battery powered. Some have a power cable but that is rare. The first step would be restoring power to the lock. Without power, an electronic lock’s backup cylinder is basically just a normal lock.

For all you cynics, the battery compartments are on the secure sides of the door, so making their own hotel keys won’t help OP break into their neighbors’.

givesomefucks, 2 months ago

Highly doubt OP even lives in that building.

mandos, 2 months ago

Added pictures

mozz, 2 months ago

I'm just trying to prevent myself from getting locked out

Riiiight

mandos, 2 months ago

See the pictures, I’m not malicious. I imagine it wouldn’t be easy to do to anyone else’s apartment door anyway. I got locked out once and was charged an excessive fee to get let back in

FrowingFostek, 2 months ago

I like cables, if it has a slot for a key card it could have been a weigand solution which would be a mag strip. If it has a square/circle plastic housing it might be rfid. Are there lights coming off the housing? Is there cable infrastructure that you can see? (Cable raceway, surface mounted conduit) if it’s a stand alone system odds are good that you won’t be able to clone a card to manipulate access. Share a picture 🙂

NightAuthor, 2 months ago

Get a model number, find specs on what tech it uses, find manuals on it…. If the guides don’t exist yet to hack it, it’ll probably take quite a bit of work. You’ll have to reverse engineer its pairing/config protocol… or something like that.

But yeah, step 1 is information gathering. I mean, you’re a software engineer right? Engineer a solution.

mandos, 2 months ago

My mistake on assuming there were already generic solutions to this kind of thing, judging by everyone’s responses, that is not the case