TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: A Hacker Games the Hotel

A Hacker Games the Hotel

Monty Solomon (monty@roscom.com)
Sat, 30 Jul 2005 23:52:37 -0400

By Kim Zetter

A vulnerability in many hotel television infrared systems can allow a
hacker to obtain guests' names and their room numbers from the billing
system.

It can also let someone read the e-mail of guests who use web mail
through the TV, putting business travelers at risk of corporate
espionage. And it can allow an intruder to add or delete charges on a
hotel guest's bill or watch pornographic films and other premium
content on their hotel TV without paying for it.

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 before he was to speak about the vulnerability
Saturday at the DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas.

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, using simple brute force programming techniques to
decipher the code that opens the doors.

http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,68370,00.html

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