This is a complete privacy and security nightmare both from the potential of cracking it and from installing an app that will probably grab every permission it can.
It's also going to be entertaining seeing people with dead batteries begging a charge from people in the lobby.
My guess is because none of they crypto is mentioned, its probably some self developed snakeoil, so you might not even need to own their phone. Could be as simple as "bluetooth address whatever, which happens to be in the central DB whitelist, says open sesame" and the door opens.
Amusingly I have a moto-X and my BT addrs is 1 less than my wifi MAC so if the security protocol is weak enough to depend on BT addrs, you could sniff the wireless for awhile and then just subtract 1 from each sniffed wifi MAC and have some fun with known good BT addrs. Or perhaps on other phones BT addrs = wifi + 1 instead of minus 1. Whatever.
Now this idea, I like.
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/08/beware-of-juice-jacking/
>My guess is because none of they crypto is mentioned, its probably some self developed snakeoil, so you might not even need to own their phone. Could be as simple as "bluetooth address whatever, which happens to be in the central DB whitelist, says open sesame" and the door opens.
I would seriously hope for this not to be true, but I've seen too many security fails to think it won't. Access is amazingly rubbish with security, especially when some RFID chip makers actually put a proprietary encryption algorithm as a selling point, when many of those (e.g. mifare) are provably broken.
Aren't hotel room locks already easily cracked? I remember seeing it on HN last year. As for permissions - if you don't like them don't install the app, they aren't going to deny you a key.
>> It's also going to be entertaining seeing people with dead batteries begging a charge from people in the lobby.
Presumably in this case they would give you a key.
They are, but this will only make them worse.
Moreover, the electronic mechanism pretty much never opens the lock: it activates a relay, which opens ... drum roll ... the physical lock. So the old, mechanical lock vulnerabilities are preserved, and new electronic ones added on top. What could posibly go wrong?
I've never been to a hotel that uses an ordinary key since those can be easily replicated, so that point is moot: all the electronic locks (most common these days) already have this "vulnerability" ("so why put a lock there in the first place?").
Second, since this system is being developed to use a smartphone, the security is easier to manage than a PIN code (such as 000000...). One can use centralised key-servers, etc.
Third, the company making these locks (the physical part) is ASSA Abloy, which is an extremely reputable lock company instead of the one in your link.
Fair enough, maybe they thought about the physical side then; Abloy make what is arguably the best mechanical lock in the world.
Still doesn't mean the authentication side is secure though.
It doesn't mean it cannot be made secure, either.
IIRC the post you're probably thinking about was the fact the reprogramming port for hotel use allowed an attacker to do gain control. This is an implementation problem with the hardware attached to the door, regardless of key technology.
Even with poorly-protected service access interfaces and magstripe keys the incidence of malicious attack doesn't provide economic incentive for hotels to do better. Bluetooth based locks may provide incentive to swap out all the existing poor security locks in a building, but there isn't anything preventing the computer security of the new locks from being even worse.