Lock Picking Gains Momentum
Less than two months after the Black Hat security conference hacker Cody Brocious picked Onity hotel doorlocks, Matthew Jakubowski has built a prototype hacking device in a marker pen.
Push the pen into the DC port on the underside of the hotel keycard lock and it instantly pops the lock open.
And we are talking about more than 20,000 hotels with these easily opened locks!
To open the lock, Brocious plugged an Arduino microcontroller into the DC power port located underneath the keycard lock. He discovered he could read the 32-bit key stored in the lock’s memory location and was able to spoof the type of portable programming device used by hotels to set master keys.
Jakubowski, a penetration tester and security researcher with the Trustwave SpiderLabs wrote, “I already had the door lock from a previous eBay purchase that I may or may not fully remember. The next step was getting an Arduino. This part wasn’t too hard either since every hacker and their grandmother should have about 50 of these lying around.
“Someone using this could be searched and even then it wouldn’t be obvious that this isn’t just a pen.” With about $30 worth of hardware, it only took Jakubowski about eight hours to build the inconspicuous lock picking pen.
On August 13, the Onity offered a free plug to stuff into the DC port but would charge accommodation providers a “nominal fee” for upgradable control boards, as well as charging for “shipping, handling and labor costs for installation”.
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