How to Hack a Hotel Room

[Guest]

Upscale hotels let guests control room lights and other functions with a tablet. But these systems can be hacked, with interesting results.

How to Hack a Hotel Room : Read more

 

[clonazepam]

Just makes me think of all the cool ideas that can't be done because having enough security costs so much, there's too little incentive left.

 

[mouse24]

From what I've read this is about as like hacking as leaving a window open is to breaking an entering.

 

[hoofhearted]

modbus, bacnet, lonmark - why can't they just wrap them in an SSL layer?

 

[hoofhearted]

Hack the elevator:
http/www.computrols.com/products/#access-controls

 

[Anakha00]

I feel like a very simple and relatively cheap security solution would be to make hotel room keys smart cards and just attach a smart card reader to the tablet/phone device being used to control the room. Add in the fact that hotels can say that smart cards are more expensive than the standard magnetic strip cards so they'll charge your credit card if you fail to turn it in at checkout and I think they'll eat it up.

 

[Guest]

So he hacked a system that he already had access to it because he was a guest... now try that from outside the building on another network. Most of these type of systems are not connected to the outside world because if they were then all kinds of shit would stop working.

Most of them are running off 20 year old software still humming away in a cupboard somewhere on 20 year old hardware as the owners have no clue and purchased the system and then never followed up on maintenance.

 

[cats_Paw]

Everyone can, give enought time, break throu anything.
Let me give you a blunt example:
2 Individuals want to rob a bank.
A) is a hacker with a decent job
B) is a gangbanger with no job.

A) has more way to do it safely but looses more if gets caught.
B) has little to lose but higher risk of getting caught.

Everything can be done if you are motivated enought and are willing to pay the price...
I doubt a lot of hackers who have a lot to loose will start hacking into girls tablets on hotels to see them naked where it could mean the same jail time as hiring a prostitue.... probably more.

Then agian, the world is full of idiots.

 

[spdragoo]

OK...just how lazy does someone have to be that they need a hotel-provided device to "remotely" open/close the curtains or adjust the A/C? I'm sorry, but hotel rooms are not that large. You're what, 10, maybe 15 feet tops, away from any particular section of the room? And you can't get off your butt to adjust the A/C -- which, BTW, is probably the first thing I adjust when I walk into a hotel room, since they never have it set cold enough -- or flip off a light switch? Especially when the light switch for the main room light is by the bathroom -- unless you just plan on "letting it go" & just wallowing in your own filth all night -- or, more importantly, the bedside lights are right by your head and have their own switches. And how about the fact that it's a longer walk from the parking lot to the front desk than it is from the balcony window to the room door, yet you somehow managed to make it that far without demanding an Egyptian-style divan carried by 4 muscular guys.

The only time this makes sense...is for a handicap-accessible room for someone who is physically unable to move at all, or for whom even walking 10 feet across a room is as physically demanding as it would be for a normal person to run a marathon without any prior training or preparation. For them, it makes sense. For those of us in at least halfway decent health, it's pure, 100% laziness to even want this.

 

[spdragoo]

OK...just how lazy does someone have to be that they need a hotel-provided device to "remotely" open/close the curtains or adjust the A/C? I'm sorry, but hotel rooms are not that large. You're what, 10, maybe 15 feet tops, away from any particular section of the room? And you can't get off your butt to adjust the A/C -- which, BTW, is probably the first thing I adjust when I walk into a hotel room, since they never have it set cold enough -- or flip off a light switch? Especially when the light switch for the main room light is by the bathroom -- unless you just plan on "letting it go" & just wallowing in your own filth all night -- or, more importantly, the bedside lights are right by your head and have their own switches. And how about the fact that it's a longer walk from the parking lot to the front desk than it is from the balcony window to the room door, yet you somehow managed to make it that far without demanding an Egyptian-style divan carried by 4 muscular guys.

The only time this makes sense...is for a handicap-accessible room for someone who is physically unable to move at all, or for whom even walking 10 feet across a room is as physically demanding as it would be for a normal person to run a marathon without any prior training or preparation. For them, it makes sense. For those of us in at least halfway decent health, it's pure, 100% laziness to even want this.