[HN Gopher] Bypassing Door Passwords
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Bypassing Door Passwords
        
       Author : sockpuppets
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2022-01-08 10:39 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (sockpuppets.medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (sockpuppets.medium.com)
        
       | yeldarb wrote:
       | This makes me nostalgic. The first homebrew app I ever
       | released[1] helped you pick combination locks with the help of
       | your Playstation Portable.
       | 
       | Looks like the original site that described the algorithm is long
       | dead, but the gist was that once you have the first number from a
       | Masterlock (which you can listen for) the search space of the
       | second two can be reduced with a pretty simple algorithm and so
       | there are only a few dozen combinations to try.
       | 
       | [1] http://forums.qj.net/psp-development-forum/7427-release-
       | psp-...
        
       | sockpuppets wrote:
       | Source Code: https://github.com/aydinnyunus/gateCracker
       | https://github.com/aydinnyunus/gateCracker-REST
        
       | egberts1 wrote:
       | As an alternative, I find Lockly to be an awesome asset for my
       | household.
       | 
       | I regularly hack my Lockly locks via Bluetooth and wireless.
       | 
       | It's holding up pretty good.
       | 
       | https://lockly.com/
        
         | netizen-936824 wrote:
         | How secure is their fingerprint reader? More secure than the
         | ones on mobile decides I hope?
        
           | egberts1 wrote:
           | everyone that walked through the front door has been asked at
           | least once to try the fingerprint mechanisms (as an
           | unregistered finger) and failed (zero false positive).
           | 
           | Unfortunately, my wife's fingerprint is scrubbed shallow from
           | excessive hand washing and gets a false negative quite often.
           | 
           | Otherwise, one has to remember the orientation and angle of
           | finger consistently to get near 100% of the time. And
           | experience gets you there.
           | 
           | The part that I like best is the number pad gets scrambled
           | each time you pressed a key while entering in your digits (4
           | to 8 digits): the glass plate would then offer no clue as to
           | what are the most frequent positions are.
           | 
           | Furthermore, any shoulder surfer would be thoroughly stymied
           | by a set of three digits to each of the keypad positions (of
           | which one of the 3 digits has the correct digit, other two
           | got randonly chosen).
        
         | vizzah wrote:
         | you regularly attempt to hack? and they're holding up? or you
         | regularly manage to actually hack them? In such case how this
         | asset can be awesome? =)
        
           | egberts1 wrote:
           | I hack without a key and i get rebuffed in all my attempts.
           | 
           | I hack with my KNOWN keys (which gets scrambled) to get in.
        
       | sockpuppets wrote:
       | Blog Post For the Research :
       | https://sockpuppets.medium.com/bypassing-door-passwords-4004...
        
       | Mountain_Skies wrote:
       | Am I the only one who thought about BBSes when seeing the
       | headline?
        
       | ipiz0618 wrote:
       | Never knew streamlit now has a cloud sharing platform. The UI has
       | improved so much as well
        
       | htgb wrote:
       | I the blog post is preferable, as the linked page doesn't provide
       | any context: https://sockpuppets.medium.com/bypassing-door-
       | passwords-4004...
        
         | VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
         | Same. I clicked the link and thought I must've opened a wrong
         | window.
        
           | sockpuppets wrote:
           | I added source code and blog post links on the demo page.
        
         | sockpuppets wrote:
         | thank you for response
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Ok, we've changed to that from
         | https://share.streamlit.io/actuallytest/test2/main/main.py.
         | Thanks!
        
       | zinekeller wrote:
       | Actually an interesting article (for context:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29850750), and demonstrates
       | that locks are indeed only keeping honest people honest.
       | Unfortunately, it seems that locks suffer from the dilemma of
       | being low-cost enough while looking that it provides security.
        
       | Nextgrid wrote:
       | A long time ago I was looking at security of contactless-related
       | security systems such as door access control. The security is
       | absolutely terrible for the most part; there was very little
       | cryptography and the cryptography there was is often broken (by
       | others that is - I don't have the skills to break it myself, I
       | just looked at existing open-source tools), so seeing
       | undocumented backdoor passwords is not surprising.
       | 
       | The general feeling that I got is that outside of IT there's a
       | lot of people who think "it's on a computer so it must be
       | secure". Maybe that's technically true in the sense that it's
       | secure because they have no clue how to use a computer and think
       | that their idea of the difficulty of using one is enough security
       | but obviously that's not the case.
       | 
       | Many systems were (and are even today - the industry is very slow
       | and physical security companies that are responsible for
       | selling/installing these systems rarely have the skills to
       | evaluate them) just based on an ID the keycard broadcasts
       | unencrypted - there is no challenge response nor encryption,
       | _even_ when the keycard itself supported at least _some_ crypto
       | (Mifare Classic for example - that is broken but at least it
       | would be an attempt at making it secure).
       | 
       | Systems that use Mifare Classic would make you think that you'd
       | need to break the crypto and copy the secret data from the card
       | (which is possible and there are open-source toolkits to do it)
       | but in reality you don't even need to bother as copying the UID
       | (which is unencrypted and broadcast in the clear) is enough.
       | 
       | Systems that use HID (which seems like it would be secure, if I
       | remember right those use at least some form of cryptography) that
       | I interacted with as a user (at a well-known tech company) used
       | USB readers in what looked like keyboard emulation mode which
       | "typed" the public UID of the card during provisioning. I am not
       | sure if the actual readers on the doors did anything more (maybe
       | the provisioning step just looks up a UID in a DB and doesn't
       | technically need to be secure, as the readers will only use that
       | UID to lookup a public key in the DB and then do proper
       | authentication?) but there could be potential for a flaw too.
        
         | meibo wrote:
         | A lot of RFID door openers also just use mechanical relays to
         | power the locking mechanism, which can be triggered from
         | outside with a strong magnet.
         | 
         | In the end it probably depends on what your threat model is. To
         | keep out thieves, most of them are probably unsuited.
        
           | Nextgrid wrote:
           | The cheap, self-contained ones yes. But I'm talking about
           | "proper" ones where the reader and controller are separate.
           | 
           | While it indeed depends on the threat model, the problem is
           | that a lot of these electronic systems are sold at a high
           | price to building management companies while being horribly
           | insecure. At least if they were cheap then fair enough - you
           | get what you pay for - but that isn't the case here; they
           | provide a false sense of security.
        
             | Spooky23 wrote:
             | The building management companies were fine with commercial
             | keys in the 80s. They are paying for a system to map
             | entitlement to lock.
             | 
             | The quality of the lock is a small part of the overall
             | equation.
             | 
             | I'll give you an example of my home. The previously
             | homeowner installed a high quality Medeco lock. It's
             | difficult to pick (unless you are YouTube's
             | lockpickinglawyee) and the keys are a pain to duplicate.
             | 
             | Secure, right? Not really. My front door is on a porch with
             | a window, and you could trivially use a thin metal bar to
             | pop the window open, assuming that you wanted to keep the
             | noise down.
        
               | Nextgrid wrote:
               | It's actually secure in the sense that the lock is
               | difficult to pick and breaking the window leaves evidence
               | of the break-in.
               | 
               | In contrast, exploiting these electronic locks leaves no
               | evidence - the same would apply to easily pickable
               | mechanical locks of course, but at least the shitty
               | mechanical ones are cheap.
        
               | BenjiWiebe wrote:
               | Though if he's referring to "picking" the window's latch,
               | then that wouldn't necessarily leave any evidence.
        
               | Spooky23 wrote:
               | I was thinking of using a jimmy bar to pop the window
               | lock.
               | 
               | I'm a pretty insignificant person without enemies. My
               | risk profile is a crackhead stealing my TV or whatever. A
               | more organized criminal could find a dozen other ways in.
        
         | lol768 wrote:
         | > just based on an ID the keycard broadcasts unencrypted
         | 
         | This isn't necessarily the end of the world. At the end of the
         | day, all that matters is the threat model.. to break an access
         | system designed in this manner using a plain UID you're going
         | to need what, something specialised like a Proxmark to be able
         | to read it any real distance away (and even then, IIRC it's
         | like a ruler's distance you'll be able to do). Otherwise, you
         | need physical possession of my access card, no?
         | 
         | Your average burgler is going to have no idea what any of this
         | stuff even is.
         | 
         | To me, the scheme being (as you describe) "horribly insecure"
         | in this way is less of a concern than e.g. a lock that can be
         | easily bumped.
        
           | Nextgrid wrote:
           | You can tap someone's keycard or wallet with an Android phone
           | and get the UID; here's an example app: https://play.google.c
           | om/store/apps/details?id=com.nellon.mif....
           | 
           | That's much easier than picking even the shittiest lock where
           | you'd need picking tools which have less plausible
           | deniability than let's say a phone, and yet these "secure"
           | keycard systems cost significantly more than a shitty lock.
        
             | BenjiWiebe wrote:
             | Actually the worst locks are so easy to pick that you just
             | insert your tension tool and turn.
             | 
             | But those aren't usually on doors. The two like that I've
             | seen: TSA approved luggage lock, high power handheld laser
             | safety lockout.
        
               | HWR_14 wrote:
               | As someone once pointed out, safety lockout locks being
               | easy to pick is a feature. They are a very strong
               | communication device, not a security measure.
        
       | oolonthegreat wrote:
       | neato. must be noted that these locks are used in almost all
       | apartment entrances in Turkey.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-01-08 23:03 UTC)