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Comment by daeken | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of which hotel you're in and what locks they use, always use the physical security mechanisms provides, e.g. door chains. Deadbolts are engaged by the lock mechanism and will be retracted by, say, maintenance key cards.

While this definitely opens up new bad things, the message is the same: don't trust the software, trust the physical. Then again, after doing this for a few years, I may be a bit on the paranoid side.

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Little hard to lock the door with door chains while you're not in the room.

Hotel occupancy is a lot lower on the weekend. I'm sure many people living in hotel rooms with more belonging than can fit in the safe will appreciated this information being released on a weekend.

Hotel safes in rooms are notoriously insecure.

Hotel safes are there to secure insurance protection for your belongings.

How so? Does it tend to stem from poor physical design, or the locking software?

I always figure that the maintenance guy and probably half the staff know the master code.

Many have backdoor passwords. Most can simply be unbolted and removed from the room.

http://gizmodo.com/5837561/can-000000-secretly-open-your-hot...

> Little hard to lock the door with door chains while you're not in the room.

A little hard, maybe, but I've seen a vid of some guy unlocking a door chain using a rubber band, coat hanger wire and a stick.

So I guess that with a little effort locking the door from outside is possible.

>trust the physical

A lock-picker might say different, no?

Probably not.

Wait until you see the flaws, man. Not being robbed is sort of a matter of being slightly more tedious to pick than the next guy.

The stuff Daeken has worked makes it ludicrously easy.

"always use the physical security mechanisms provides, e.g. door chains"

Sliding chain locks which can be defeated with a rubber band... :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7INIRLe7x0Y&t=60s

That seems like an implementation problem. (warning: anecdote ahead:) All sliding chain locks I've used are up at eye level, which would make this much more complicated, if not impossible. That, or they have the hard-bar-over-ball lock, also at eye-level.

Plus, my large hands wouldn't have been able to do that trick. :/

Now I wonder, how big is this then? 4M hotels in the US, what slice of the pie is that compared to the whole number of hotels in the US? And how many in Europe/Australia/Asia, do they use completely different locks?

Also, just because you leaked the details today (yesterday?), how realistic is his worry that evil parties might copy the tech before the weekend? :)

And indeed, doesn't every hotel room have a small safe, I don't just keep my passport there, but also my laptop, camera and phone if I don't take them with me.

And indeed indeed, I never even considered whether the door to my hotel room would be "secure", if maintenance and cleaning have a universal key, it's mostly a privacy measure, rating somewhat above a bathroom stall lock. It might be different if they wouldn't all have a small safe, though.

Now I do wonder how secure those safes are, in general :) Any idea? (edit: whoops I should've read the thread further, this has already been discussed--great discussion though, keep it up!)

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