[psobot]

Viscount has hilariously bad security. I used to live in a building in Toronto that used Viscount infrared fobs for access control. They were no more secure than TV remotes; no rolling codes, no encryption, nothing. An attacker could easily sit nearby with an IR receiver and collect everyone's fob codes at a distance, allowing access to all floors.

Needless to say, I moved.

[prometheus76]

This was 30 years ago, so I'm sure a lot has changed since then. I was a missionary and the way we got into buildings in Toronto to knock on doors was to just pick the last name with the most letters from the directory, buzz them, and when they answered, we would just say "pizza delivery" and 95% of the time they buzzed the door open.

[nosioptar]

It'd be nice if missionaries weren't such hypocrites. Claiming to be the pizza guy when you're actually selling magic underwear is bearing false witness.

[lostlogin]

Does anyone ever actually get converted by a door knocking missionary?

[withinboredom]

What’s does the letters in their name have to do with it?

[Frederation]

I hope you are doing better!

[ghaff]

I'm not going to especially defend but you have a way more sophisticated model of how most burglars work than is almost certainly the case.

[reaperducer]

Exactly. This article should be titled "I figured out a really obtuse way to break into apartment buildings."

A rock will get the job done in a fraction of the time.

It's like all those nobodies on HN who go through all kinds of software gymnastics to secure their phone against imaginary "threat actors," when a mugger is just going to keep twisting their arm behind their back until they enter their PIN.

[happyopossum]

> infrared fobs

Wait, what? You have to point a powered device at an IR receiver and press a button like a TV remote? I've never seen a building entry system like that!

[psobot]

Exactly that, yes! IR receivers outside every exterior door to the building, and IR receivers in the elevators to control access on a floor-by-floor basis.

The fobs were visible by an IR camera (including the average smartphone) and could trivially be decoded as a short bit sequence with an IR sensor wired into a microphone jack, as the bit pattern was transmitted at ~audio rates.

[__MatrixMan__]

That's probably because it's not so good as a building non-entry system.