A reason to run away from infrared
August 2nd, 2005
A vulnerability in many hotel T.V. infrared systems can allow a hacker to obtain names and room numbers of guests from the hotel billing system. The hacker could read the e-mail of guests who use web mail through the TV, putting the users at risk. Adam Laurie, technical director of the London security and networking firm The Bunker showed Wired News how he conducted such attacks at hotels around the world. Laurie is known as ‘Major Malfunction’ in the hacker community. He also revealed how infrared used for garage door openers and car-door locks could be hacked. If you are interested in getting freebies at the hotels, all you need is a laptop running Linux, an infrared transmitter and a USB TV tuner. We are sure to hear more of ‘I did not rent that movie!’
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I wonder how many hackers know how to hack into garage door openers… (!) Now that’s a scary thought.
It’s fairly easy to do I would say, all you need is an infrared hooked up to something that will let you record the signal being used and then replay it when you want to open\close the door..
There was a spate of that years ago in Ireland where people were setting off car alarms at night and then recording the signal used to reset the alarm. That’s why now all the remotes in Ireland on new cars have two buttons one for locking\reseting and the other for unlocking..
ahhh ok…thanks Gambl0r..i need to find out which device is used to record those signals…sounds really interesting.
ajay
I stayed in a hotel in Barcelona once and when we went to pay the bill they charged us for a porn movie that (I swear) we never rented. Think it could have been a porn hacker?
Sarah’s comment reminds me of that Friends episode where Joey watches the porn in Monica and Chandler’s honeymoon suite!
The garage door hacking is super scary… you like to think that you’re safe at home. Thank god for big scary looking dogs!