Nintendo Keyless Entry

December 8, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 17 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUm7daf36Mk]

The Nintendo keyless entry system will vigilantly guard your door from intruders. Enter the right code and you get access, enter the wrong code and it will deny you and take your picture. [action_owl] did a fantastic job on this lock, using mainly recycled parts like an old CDRom and an Arduino. It works both with or without the computer. If you choose not to use the computer, you don’t get pictures of the people who entered the code wrong.

We like this project, but we feel it needs to be pointed out that this lock is pretty useless. Everyone already knows the code to get in is UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A.

Upgrade An Electric Lock Keypad

November 30, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

lock_buttons

[OldGrover] bought a Weiser electronic lock. Only 6 months after installing it, the keypad stopped working. Instead of just accepting this, [OldGrover] built a better button pad for his lock. He decided to go with big push buttons instead of a similar to stock membrane system. After tracing out where the original buttons connected, he attached his new buttons and enclosure. Pretty simple really but it fixed the problem and kept the lock out of the landfill. Now, he has a unique looking keypad on his front door.

Impressioning At LockCon

November 10, 2008 by Eliot 5 Comments

impressioning

[Steffen Wernéry] has published a video of the impressioning contest at LockCon. We learned about key impressioning at this year’s HOPE conference. You start the process by inserting a key blank into the lock. By turning the lock until it stops and then moving the key up and down you create marks on the blank’s face. Take a file to those marks to remove the extra material and then repeat the process. Once the pins are set properly, they’ll stop leaving marks on the blank. It takes a lot of skill to do this right, but you end up with a perfectly functional key. [Barry Wels] managed to win the competition in 5:30 with second place coming in at 6 minutes.

USB Authenticated Deadbolt Lock

October 22, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 29 Comments

The Makers local 256 sent us this USB authenticated deadbolt prject. For roughly $60 these guys built an authentication system that reads the serial number off of the chip in a USB storage device. The actual content on the memory in the USB device is not used at all. They are using a Freeduino board to control its behavior. It has a magnetic sensor that keeps it from initiating the lock when the door is open. They mention that they are using Transparent Aluminum as an enclosure, we assume they mean the Star Trek variety, not Aluminium oxynitride. Be sure to check out the video after the break.

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Keyless Entry Using Touch Sensing

October 20, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

[Alex] sent us this slick little keyless entry system. He wanted a discreet way to trigger the door to unlock. Knocking was too loud, and would give away his secret access code. He decided that touch sensors would be the best. Initially he planned on using the doorknob itself, which would have been awesome, but it was just too much surface area for his touch sensor. Ultimately, he settled for a wire he could touch. An Arduino detects whether or not the correct code has been put in and initializes a high torque servo which turns the doorknob from the inside. In the video, after the break, you can see that it works fairly well.

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LockCon Coming Soon

September 14, 2008 by Eliot 2 Comments

The Open Organisation Of Lockpickers (TOOOL) is planning a new annual gathering for lockpickers. October 9-12th they will hold the first ever LockCon in Sneek, Netherlands. The event was spawned from the Dutch Open lockpicking championships, but they’ve decided to expand beyond just competition into a full conference. This year the conference is limited to just 100 lockpickers, technicians, manufacturers, hackers, and law enforcement members. They’ll compete in picking competitions, safe manipulation, and key impressioning.

On a related note: Organizer [Barry Wels] just became the first non-German to win an SSDeV competition with his key impressioning skills. We covered key impressioning when we saw his talk about high security keys at The Last Hope. He says it’s only been about two years worth of study and 500 keys to become a master. He managed to open the lock in 5:13 filing two whole keys during that time.

[photo: Rija 2.0]

Biometric Locks Turned Trojan

August 15, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

In the same vein as our recent Defcon article on biometric cloning, White Wolf Security has released this article about turning a biometric door lock into a trojan. They note that there are many common ways to break into one, from harvesting fingerprints to using gummy bears to fake a finger. This hack involves having full access to the unit so you can disassemble it.

The unit has a system built-in where you can touch a 9-volt battery to some connectors on the bottom to power it in case of a building power failure. The researchers simply routed some wires from the motorized lock to the plates used for the 9-volt and then reassembled the lock. The door can then be opened at any time without verification, even if the software on the unit is reset.

[Thanks, dwight]