11 ms·

Airbnb's preferred smart lock vendor accidentally bricks 500 door-locks

137 points by edward 9y ago

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
We/the media really should have picked a word other than "smart" for these devices.
- crooked-v 9y ago
  https://twitter.com/internetofshit https://twitter.com/internetofshit
- nxsynonym 9y ago
  I think "connected" would be a good replacement term. Smart implies some sort of intuitiveness or responsiveness, which is often not the case.
  - duncanawoods 9y ago
    Not bad. Could go further and call them "dependent" to make it unambiguous that they are not standalone devices but out of your control and potentially worthless if the connected services close or fail.
    - jlgaddis 9y ago
      The Marketing Department would never approve using that term!
raverbashing 9y ago
I've worked with embedded device makers that had better ideas about building redundancy and failsafe procedures into their products While software mistakes do happen, it seems any moron these days thinks they can put out an IoT product because they know how to flash a led on Arduino and they make no effort whatsoever in thinking how to make their devices have minimum reliability Have a user accessible USB port (from the inside) from which a signed payload can be loaded for cases like these. Would have saved several days for their customers and several shipping fees.
- technofiend 9y ago
  Well, good points I suppose. On the other hand if you have a USB port on the thing, what's to keep someone from flashing an update that backdoors the lock? Wait a few weeks, rob the place, rinse, repeat. Now that I think about it, I hope these devices are validating the certificate of publisher and the updates are signed.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > I hope these devices are validating the certificate of publisher and the updates are signed. You're joking right? Really, the vast majority of this iot stuff is ridiculously bad in this respect. Plain text data transfer, unsigned updates from any source based on a text message and so on. It's a disaster waiting to happen.
    - stupidstupid1 9y ago
      A disaster that has already and continues to happen, you mean.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        No, I'm thinking along the lines of large vehicle manufacturer doing an over the air update of the firmware of their vehicles bricking all of them, including the ones on the road. That kind of disaster.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    > what's to keep someone from flashing an update that backdoors the lock? > from which a signed payload can be loaded All updates should be digitally signed by the lock manufacturer
    - jlgaddis 9y ago
      From a security perspective, absolutely they should. But then we complain because we don't "own" the hardware and can't hack around on it.
lemoncucumber 9y ago
From looking at the product website, it looks like these locks have traditional keys as well, so I would hope that nobody is locked out of their own house while waiting for their lock to be fixed. The article didn't provide much detail, so I was picturing people getting locked out (or worse, locked in) to their own apartments. What will it take to get IoT device manufacturers to adopt development practices that prevent this kind of thing happening? It's bad enough that most software is bug-ridden and poorly tested, but it's inexcusable for IoT software if they ever expect IoT devices to replace traditional alternatives.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Probably stiff regulation. I wonder if a certification body (like UL) could work though. Probably is it is hard to boil "works good" down to a set of clear requirements.
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    Agreed. I don't see any major changes happening (WRT IoT insecurity) until there's regulation that requires it. The industry certainly isn't trying to solve this on their own (if they are, they're hiding it very well), they're only worried about getting to market as quickly and cheaply as possible. I expect this to continue getting worse. At some point, hopefully, things will change and begin to improve. I think we'll see many more -- and worse -- incidents like this before that happens, though.
- OkGoDoIt 9y ago
  Affected product owner here, I can clarify. First they do not lock from the inside, so they never prevent people from leaving, there's no issue there. Also they fail closed so at least my venues weren't open for thieves to just walk in (SOMA in SF is not exactly the best place to leave your doors unlocked). They do accept traditional keys but the whole point of the lock is to delegate restricted access to people at certain times and with logs/notifications. So a physical key is like an admin override, not to be used in normal circumstances. As such, only me and my partner have them, and we generally never use them. In a wonderful example of Murphy's Law we were both out of town this weekend so all the people that were supposed to be coming to the venue to set up for a show were locked out with no recourse, it was a huge mess. Long story short, the use case of these locks renders the traditional key fallback less than ideal.
falcolas 9y ago
Frankly, this is why OTA updates for critical infrastructure (locks, heating, phones, vehicles) always scares me. It's too frequent an issue that someone's device gets bricked as a result, leaving folks with no practical remedy in many cases.
- swiley 9y ago
  The users should be the ones updating it, and the ones paying the ISP bill if it gets hacked.
tlb 9y ago
I've pushed dozens of OTA updates to WiFi devices (telepresence robots), and it's always terrifying. We'd test thoroughly, and we'd always start with devices in our office, and wait to see them reboot before pushing to customers. In addition, we had a scheme where we'd push an update, it'd reboot, and if it didn't connect to our server within 20 minutes it'd revert to the previous version and reboot again. WCGW? We never bricked one in the field, but I can think of a million ways it could have happened. The scariest times were pushing updates that affected WiFi connection for customers with unusual network configurations. In particular, we had one with a multi-campus Cisco WiFi system with WPA-Enterprise, which requires logging into a RADIUS server to get WiFi. We were running on FreeBSD which had a half-assed port of the Linux WPA authenticator. We never managed to replicate their network perfectly for in-house testing, so pushing updates to them was always nerve-wracking.
- joshribakoff 9y ago
  our app updates via the app itself. This gets regularly bricked but we have a Cronjob where we can put bash commands in a .txt file and upload that to our server, and devices will execute it regularly. This has always saved the day but apparently the past developers before me used to drive around with a USB stick on a regular basis, to re-image bricked devices. I can also confirm the wifi problem. Not knowing if a device is bricked or just on bad wifi is a huge problem you have to somehow account for. It was terrifying before I built tools to keep track of which devices those are
  - mysterydip 9y ago
    Your end devices execute arbitrary code put in a specific url on your website? I assume this is a purely in-house device and not one in the hands of consumers?
    - agwa 9y ago
      Executing arbitrary code put at a specific URL on a website is exactly how software updates work. As long as it's properly authenticated, it's fine.
gubby 9y ago
14 days for a replacement is an atrocious amount of time.
- mikeash 9y ago
  I can't understand it. You can mail them the guts of your lock, have them fix it, then mail it back to you, all in a week or less. Or they can just send you a new one, and it takes at least two weeks? Do new ones come by courier snail from China, or is this just a scheme to discourage people from opting for a replacement, or what?
  - OkGoDoIt 9y ago
    That may be the official statement but they sent me a replacement next day.
  - turtlebits 9y ago
    It says 14 days lead time. I'm guessing they don't have the parts in stock for 500+ devices affected.
- fooey 9y ago
  I assume that number is mostly to deter people from going with that option
ChuckMcM 9y ago
Ouch. Clearly someone missed a possible outcome on their OTA update flow. Worse, they didn't devise a way that you could locally get the device sane enough to do another OTA. Counts as a double fault :-(
foobaw 9y ago
I've pushed OTA updates to smartphones before: there is a rigorous certification process that the software has to go through before reaching the customers. We've had times where we had to push emergency OTAs soon after, but never a time where we had to do any sort of recall due to an OTA. I'm certain that these vendors don't have nearly the same amount of checks compared to smartphones due to much less overhead (like we had from carriers, Google, SoCs), but it's still astonishing how this could happen, but it's a good lesson for them, mistakes happen and I hope they implement a system where this is not possible to happen again.
jacquesm 9y ago
This is why I always look extremely carefully at companies that operate machinery (cars, machine tools and other connected devices) and do OTA updates. This sometimes leads to interesting discoveries and blind spots. Who ever thought that updating software connected to the cars' buses without first checking that the car is stationary was a good idea?...
org3432 9y ago
I had a flight get delayed due to needing an OS reinstall on a 737-800, the OTA update failed and they had to send someone out to connect to the USB port to recover the OS. The plane was bricked essentially and couldn't take off. Fun.
- busterarm 9y ago
  That's better than my flight 18 years ago where the onboard computers all died mid-takeoff, we had to abort takeoff and sat on the tarmac for about 3 hours while they sourced alternate computers and did the replacement.
- thomasjudge 9y ago
  Boy that suggests an interesting attack vector. You didn't happen to see where the USB port to update the OS on the plane is, did you? Hopefully the in-seat USB ports aren't wired to this somehow...
  - swiley 9y ago
    There is no way that firmware isn't signed.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  They don't do ota updates for planes
  - com2kid 9y ago
    > They don't do ota updates for planes Could have been the Electronic Flight Bag, those can run commodity OSs. I can see an OTA failing there and it needing an OS reinstall. It'd be odd, but not impossible.
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    Seems like it would save a lot of time, energy, and money if they did (assuming they had the procedure worked out). Push out an update while it's sitting at the gate, powered down, instead of taking it out of service and having to bring it into a hangar (where space is already limited).
twblalock 9y ago
Stuff like this is why I don't own any "smart" devices. I never think about my deadbolt unless I am opening my door. I never think about my smoke alarm unless starts to chirp because of a low battery. I never think about my light bulbs unless they burn out. Any "smart" features, like notifications or a phone app, are going to make me spend more time thinking about these products than I care to, even if they are working perfectly. Failed OTA updates make things even worse. That door lock is going to need to introduce an extremely compelling new feature to convince me to spend time thinking about such a basic component of my home's infrastructure.
- notjustanymike 9y ago
  I think the feature is fairly compelling in this case. Smart locks allow airbnb hosts to grant limited entry to guests without sharing their house keys. Any frequent airbnb renter runs the risk of their keys being duped and used for illicit access later on. While the implementation still needs work (obviously), the core idea is sound.
  - graphitezepp 9y ago
    My neo-luddite instincts told me to agree with parent, but you make a good point. Copying keys is trivial (I used an automated booth in a pharmacy that was android based the other week, cost like 10 bucks for 3 copies) when having to deal with potentially malicious guests adding complexity to the simple act of locking serves a real purpose.
    - rhombocombus 9y ago
      My initial reaction on reading this was "Bahahahah stupid smart locks, internet of shit blah blah blah," but I am compelled to agree with your statement. Any lock is merely a deterrent, and adding complexity to a deterrent inherently increases it's security, especially when the threat profile of a door lock is generally "idiot burglar."
      - myusernameisok 9y ago
mschuster91 9y ago
Happens to Google Chromecasts kinda often, by a quick Google - and you can't reflash them via USB. Same for phones, especially cheap ones tend to brick themselves on updates, and it's a hassle to get them reflashed. The solution is simple, though: Use U-boot, two partitions for firmware and a tiny script using a boot counter/flag. Only after successful boot set the flag "do not boot back to old firmware". But doing that well requires recent versions of U-boot, and people are STILL shipping devices with 2012 or earlier versions...
mi100hael 9y ago
Why are they even pushing out OTA updates for a deadbolt? Who designs a deadbolt that locks/unlocks via expiring codes and thinks "we're going to need to release so many updates for this that we should use OTA updates instead of the customer manually applying an occasional patch."
OkGoDoIt 9y ago
I own 2 of these smartlocks (for my theater and my speakeasy, it's nice to be able to let performers/crew in on set schedules with SMS confirmation). They have both been down since last week. It's been hugely annoying, especially considering we paid over $600 per lock. They overnighted us new circuitboards that we have to manually replace, but the timing was horrible as both me and my partner were out of town all weekend and couldn't do the repair, so it impacted load-in for a show on Sunday. These locks have some nice advantages but sometimes I feel like they are way too internet-reliant and a bit outside my control. Furthermore the company isn't exactly the picture of professionalism (their IOS app has actually gotten worse during the year+ I have owned the locks) and I wonder if there will be any functionality left in my $600 locks if/when they go out of business someday.
stretchwithme 9y ago
Tesla's doing OTA pretty robustly. Maybe there just isn't enough space in a door lock to do it properly. If a system can go back the last working version if the latest fails to work, even a bad version shouldn't brick the device.
- com2kid 9y ago
  > Maybe there just isn't enough space in a door lock to do it properly. Doubtful, dead simple OTA with recovery requires a 2x allocation of space. $2 or so of parts covers it for 99% of embedded scenarios, and if the product doesn't have enough storage to do a recovery OTA then the product wasn't spec'd properly. More clever but just as robust systems can get away with less (however much a recovery partition takes up, if doing WiFi that can be a lot). > If a system can go back the last working version if the latest fails to work, even a bad version shouldn't brick the device. Knowing when the current version has failed can be hard. If the system comes up 99% of the way but one driver fails, that can be hard to determine programmatically. Obviously the manufacturer here didn't have that robust of tests running at startup to determine if there was a need to rollback. To be fair, most software updates don't have that level of rigor. Pre-release testing catches the majority of issues, as it should. Now days, phased rollouts to opt-in beta testers is standard to try and catch any remaining issues.
busterarm 9y ago
I hate just posting because I have an axe to grind here but wifi locks for airbnb are an incredibly stupid thing to have for all sorts of reasons. Just get normal locks and hire a damn property manager. When I used to work for an ISP in a resort town, our support desk would get tons of calls when power went out (a frequent issue there) or our service went out. It was always property owners who lived multiple states away who couldn't get their renters access to their property. Always furious. Always without someone local who could let someone on to the property.
- sargun 9y ago
  What prevents someone from copying the key?
  - busterarm 9y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012746
- jasonlaramburu 9y ago
  I'd rather keep the management fee and hide a key on my front lawn for emergencies. Remember the hidden rock key box?
post_break 9y ago
Lockitron locked me out of my apartment. Danalock jammed in the middle of unlocking and made it very difficult to get inside. You know what works 24x7? My car's door. Why is this so hard?
- busterarm 9y ago
  Where are we going to put a car battery and the means to charge it in your door frame? Are you going to operate a crank to recharge the battery? I'm not too keen on wiring mains power up to something connected to my door handle.
  - PhantomGremlin 9y ago
    I'm not too keen on wiring mains power up to something connected to my door handle. This is a solved problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_transformer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_transformer
    - busterarm 9y ago
      They can fail though (and I've seen it happen, overload, excessive moisture, etc.,). How do you know this before you touch the doorknob and get the (possibly final) zap of your life? If the failure mode is potentially "you die", then we're probably better off low tech.
  - post_break 9y ago
    I would just run constant power to my door if it means I get to walk up to it and it unlocks.
- s0rce 9y ago
  My car door is currently broken, the lock somehow got pushed into the door and the keyless entry broken years ago. Luckily, its only the passenger door so I just unlock it from inside but if it was the driver door I'd have to take the door apart to fix it.
- detaro 9y ago
adrianpike 9y ago
Does anyone here have experience with Mender or similar? I'm looking to do some IoT work and over-the-air updates are still my biggest unsolved problem. I'd love any guidance on any good tools to research & investigate.
sjbase 9y ago
This type of headline is why large enterprises are often careful about working with unproven 3rd parties. And consequently why the enterprise sales cycle feels so slow and bureaucratic. LockState makes the mistake, and AirBnB takes collateral damage.

137 points by edward 9y ago

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

We/the media really should have picked a word other than "smart" for these devices.

crooked-v 9y ago
https://twitter.com/internetofshit https://twitter.com/internetofshit
nxsynonym 9y ago
I think "connected" would be a good replacement term. Smart implies some sort of intuitiveness or responsiveness, which is often not the case.
- duncanawoods 9y ago
  Not bad. Could go further and call them "dependent" to make it unambiguous that they are not standalone devices but out of your control and potentially worthless if the connected services close or fail.
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    The Marketing Department would never approve using that term!

raverbashing 9y ago

I've worked with embedded device makers that had better ideas about building redundancy and failsafe procedures into their products While software mistakes do happen, it seems any moron these days thinks they can put out an IoT product because they know how to flash a led on Arduino and they make no effort whatsoever in thinking how to make their devices have minimum reliability Have a user accessible USB port (from the inside) from which a signed payload can be loaded for cases like these. Would have saved several days for their customers and several shipping fees.

technofiend 9y ago
Well, good points I suppose. On the other hand if you have a USB port on the thing, what's to keep someone from flashing an update that backdoors the lock? Wait a few weeks, rob the place, rinse, repeat. Now that I think about it, I hope these devices are validating the certificate of publisher and the updates are signed.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > I hope these devices are validating the certificate of publisher and the updates are signed. You're joking right? Really, the vast majority of this iot stuff is ridiculously bad in this respect. Plain text data transfer, unsigned updates from any source based on a text message and so on. It's a disaster waiting to happen.
  - stupidstupid1 9y ago
    A disaster that has already and continues to happen, you mean.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      No, I'm thinking along the lines of large vehicle manufacturer doing an over the air update of the firmware of their vehicles bricking all of them, including the ones on the road. That kind of disaster.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  > what's to keep someone from flashing an update that backdoors the lock? > from which a signed payload can be loaded All updates should be digitally signed by the lock manufacturer
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    From a security perspective, absolutely they should. But then we complain because we don't "own" the hardware and can't hack around on it.

lemoncucumber 9y ago

From looking at the product website, it looks like these locks have traditional keys as well, so I would hope that nobody is locked out of their own house while waiting for their lock to be fixed. The article didn't provide much detail, so I was picturing people getting locked out (or worse, locked in) to their own apartments. What will it take to get IoT device manufacturers to adopt development practices that prevent this kind of thing happening? It's bad enough that most software is bug-ridden and poorly tested, but it's inexcusable for IoT software if they ever expect IoT devices to replace traditional alternatives.

maxerickson 9y ago
Probably stiff regulation. I wonder if a certification body (like UL) could work though. Probably is it is hard to boil "works good" down to a set of clear requirements.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  Agreed. I don't see any major changes happening (WRT IoT insecurity) until there's regulation that requires it. The industry certainly isn't trying to solve this on their own (if they are, they're hiding it very well), they're only worried about getting to market as quickly and cheaply as possible. I expect this to continue getting worse. At some point, hopefully, things will change and begin to improve. I think we'll see many more -- and worse -- incidents like this before that happens, though.
OkGoDoIt 9y ago
Affected product owner here, I can clarify. First they do not lock from the inside, so they never prevent people from leaving, there's no issue there. Also they fail closed so at least my venues weren't open for thieves to just walk in (SOMA in SF is not exactly the best place to leave your doors unlocked). They do accept traditional keys but the whole point of the lock is to delegate restricted access to people at certain times and with logs/notifications. So a physical key is like an admin override, not to be used in normal circumstances. As such, only me and my partner have them, and we generally never use them. In a wonderful example of Murphy's Law we were both out of town this weekend so all the people that were supposed to be coming to the venue to set up for a show were locked out with no recourse, it was a huge mess. Long story short, the use case of these locks renders the traditional key fallback less than ideal.

falcolas 9y ago

Frankly, this is why OTA updates for critical infrastructure (locks, heating, phones, vehicles) always scares me. It's too frequent an issue that someone's device gets bricked as a result, leaving folks with no practical remedy in many cases.

swiley 9y ago
The users should be the ones updating it, and the ones paying the ISP bill if it gets hacked.

tlb 9y ago

I've pushed dozens of OTA updates to WiFi devices (telepresence robots), and it's always terrifying. We'd test thoroughly, and we'd always start with devices in our office, and wait to see them reboot before pushing to customers. In addition, we had a scheme where we'd push an update, it'd reboot, and if it didn't connect to our server within 20 minutes it'd revert to the previous version and reboot again. WCGW? We never bricked one in the field, but I can think of a million ways it could have happened. The scariest times were pushing updates that affected WiFi connection for customers with unusual network configurations. In particular, we had one with a multi-campus Cisco WiFi system with WPA-Enterprise, which requires logging into a RADIUS server to get WiFi. We were running on FreeBSD which had a half-assed port of the Linux WPA authenticator. We never managed to replicate their network perfectly for in-house testing, so pushing updates to them was always nerve-wracking.

joshribakoff 9y ago
our app updates via the app itself. This gets regularly bricked but we have a Cronjob where we can put bash commands in a .txt file and upload that to our server, and devices will execute it regularly. This has always saved the day but apparently the past developers before me used to drive around with a USB stick on a regular basis, to re-image bricked devices. I can also confirm the wifi problem. Not knowing if a device is bricked or just on bad wifi is a huge problem you have to somehow account for. It was terrifying before I built tools to keep track of which devices those are
- mysterydip 9y ago
  Your end devices execute arbitrary code put in a specific url on your website? I assume this is a purely in-house device and not one in the hands of consumers?
  - agwa 9y ago
    Executing arbitrary code put at a specific URL on a website is exactly how software updates work. As long as it's properly authenticated, it's fine.

gubby 9y ago

14 days for a replacement is an atrocious amount of time.

mikeash 9y ago
I can't understand it. You can mail them the guts of your lock, have them fix it, then mail it back to you, all in a week or less. Or they can just send you a new one, and it takes at least two weeks? Do new ones come by courier snail from China, or is this just a scheme to discourage people from opting for a replacement, or what?
- OkGoDoIt 9y ago
  That may be the official statement but they sent me a replacement next day.
- turtlebits 9y ago
  It says 14 days lead time. I'm guessing they don't have the parts in stock for 500+ devices affected.
fooey 9y ago
I assume that number is mostly to deter people from going with that option

ChuckMcM 9y ago

Ouch. Clearly someone missed a possible outcome on their OTA update flow. Worse, they didn't devise a way that you could locally get the device sane enough to do another OTA. Counts as a double fault :-(

foobaw 9y ago

I've pushed OTA updates to smartphones before: there is a rigorous certification process that the software has to go through before reaching the customers. We've had times where we had to push emergency OTAs soon after, but never a time where we had to do any sort of recall due to an OTA. I'm certain that these vendors don't have nearly the same amount of checks compared to smartphones due to much less overhead (like we had from carriers, Google, SoCs), but it's still astonishing how this could happen, but it's a good lesson for them, mistakes happen and I hope they implement a system where this is not possible to happen again.

jacquesm 9y ago

This is why I always look extremely carefully at companies that operate machinery (cars, machine tools and other connected devices) and do OTA updates. This sometimes leads to interesting discoveries and blind spots. Who ever thought that updating software connected to the cars' buses without first checking that the car is stationary was a good idea?...

org3432 9y ago

I had a flight get delayed due to needing an OS reinstall on a 737-800, the OTA update failed and they had to send someone out to connect to the USB port to recover the OS. The plane was bricked essentially and couldn't take off. Fun.

busterarm 9y ago
That's better than my flight 18 years ago where the onboard computers all died mid-takeoff, we had to abort takeoff and sat on the tarmac for about 3 hours while they sourced alternate computers and did the replacement.
thomasjudge 9y ago
Boy that suggests an interesting attack vector. You didn't happen to see where the USB port to update the OS on the plane is, did you? Hopefully the in-seat USB ports aren't wired to this somehow...
- swiley 9y ago
  There is no way that firmware isn't signed.
raverbashing 9y ago
They don't do ota updates for planes
- com2kid 9y ago
  > They don't do ota updates for planes Could have been the Electronic Flight Bag, those can run commodity OSs. I can see an OTA failing there and it needing an OS reinstall. It'd be odd, but not impossible.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  Seems like it would save a lot of time, energy, and money if they did (assuming they had the procedure worked out). Push out an update while it's sitting at the gate, powered down, instead of taking it out of service and having to bring it into a hangar (where space is already limited).

twblalock 9y ago

Stuff like this is why I don't own any "smart" devices. I never think about my deadbolt unless I am opening my door. I never think about my smoke alarm unless starts to chirp because of a low battery. I never think about my light bulbs unless they burn out. Any "smart" features, like notifications or a phone app, are going to make me spend more time thinking about these products than I care to, even if they are working perfectly. Failed OTA updates make things even worse. That door lock is going to need to introduce an extremely compelling new feature to convince me to spend time thinking about such a basic component of my home's infrastructure.

notjustanymike 9y ago
I think the feature is fairly compelling in this case. Smart locks allow airbnb hosts to grant limited entry to guests without sharing their house keys. Any frequent airbnb renter runs the risk of their keys being duped and used for illicit access later on. While the implementation still needs work (obviously), the core idea is sound.
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  My neo-luddite instincts told me to agree with parent, but you make a good point. Copying keys is trivial (I used an automated booth in a pharmacy that was android based the other week, cost like 10 bucks for 3 copies) when having to deal with potentially malicious guests adding complexity to the simple act of locking serves a real purpose.
  - rhombocombus 9y ago
    My initial reaction on reading this was "Bahahahah stupid smart locks, internet of shit blah blah blah," but I am compelled to agree with your statement. Any lock is merely a deterrent, and adding complexity to a deterrent inherently increases it's security, especially when the threat profile of a door lock is generally "idiot burglar."
    - myusernameisok 9y ago

mschuster91 9y ago

Happens to Google Chromecasts kinda often, by a quick Google - and you can't reflash them via USB. Same for phones, especially cheap ones tend to brick themselves on updates, and it's a hassle to get them reflashed. The solution is simple, though: Use U-boot, two partitions for firmware and a tiny script using a boot counter/flag. Only after successful boot set the flag "do not boot back to old firmware". But doing that well requires recent versions of U-boot, and people are STILL shipping devices with 2012 or earlier versions...

mi100hael 9y ago

Why are they even pushing out OTA updates for a deadbolt? Who designs a deadbolt that locks/unlocks via expiring codes and thinks "we're going to need to release so many updates for this that we should use OTA updates instead of the customer manually applying an occasional patch."

OkGoDoIt 9y ago

I own 2 of these smartlocks (for my theater and my speakeasy, it's nice to be able to let performers/crew in on set schedules with SMS confirmation). They have both been down since last week. It's been hugely annoying, especially considering we paid over $600 per lock. They overnighted us new circuitboards that we have to manually replace, but the timing was horrible as both me and my partner were out of town all weekend and couldn't do the repair, so it impacted load-in for a show on Sunday. These locks have some nice advantages but sometimes I feel like they are way too internet-reliant and a bit outside my control. Furthermore the company isn't exactly the picture of professionalism (their IOS app has actually gotten worse during the year+ I have owned the locks) and I wonder if there will be any functionality left in my $600 locks if/when they go out of business someday.

stretchwithme 9y ago

Tesla's doing OTA pretty robustly. Maybe there just isn't enough space in a door lock to do it properly. If a system can go back the last working version if the latest fails to work, even a bad version shouldn't brick the device.

com2kid 9y ago
> Maybe there just isn't enough space in a door lock to do it properly. Doubtful, dead simple OTA with recovery requires a 2x allocation of space. $2 or so of parts covers it for 99% of embedded scenarios, and if the product doesn't have enough storage to do a recovery OTA then the product wasn't spec'd properly. More clever but just as robust systems can get away with less (however much a recovery partition takes up, if doing WiFi that can be a lot). > If a system can go back the last working version if the latest fails to work, even a bad version shouldn't brick the device. Knowing when the current version has failed can be hard. If the system comes up 99% of the way but one driver fails, that can be hard to determine programmatically. Obviously the manufacturer here didn't have that robust of tests running at startup to determine if there was a need to rollback. To be fair, most software updates don't have that level of rigor. Pre-release testing catches the majority of issues, as it should. Now days, phased rollouts to opt-in beta testers is standard to try and catch any remaining issues.

busterarm 9y ago

I hate just posting because I have an axe to grind here but wifi locks for airbnb are an incredibly stupid thing to have for all sorts of reasons. Just get normal locks and hire a damn property manager. When I used to work for an ISP in a resort town, our support desk would get tons of calls when power went out (a frequent issue there) or our service went out. It was always property owners who lived multiple states away who couldn't get their renters access to their property. Always furious. Always without someone local who could let someone on to the property.

sargun 9y ago
What prevents someone from copying the key?
- busterarm 9y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012746
jasonlaramburu 9y ago
I'd rather keep the management fee and hide a key on my front lawn for emergencies. Remember the hidden rock key box?

post_break 9y ago

Lockitron locked me out of my apartment. Danalock jammed in the middle of unlocking and made it very difficult to get inside. You know what works 24x7? My car's door. Why is this so hard?

busterarm 9y ago
Where are we going to put a car battery and the means to charge it in your door frame? Are you going to operate a crank to recharge the battery? I'm not too keen on wiring mains power up to something connected to my door handle.
- PhantomGremlin 9y ago
  I'm not too keen on wiring mains power up to something connected to my door handle. This is a solved problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_transformer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_transformer
  - busterarm 9y ago
    They can fail though (and I've seen it happen, overload, excessive moisture, etc.,). How do you know this before you touch the doorknob and get the (possibly final) zap of your life? If the failure mode is potentially "you die", then we're probably better off low tech.
- post_break 9y ago
  I would just run constant power to my door if it means I get to walk up to it and it unlocks.
s0rce 9y ago
My car door is currently broken, the lock somehow got pushed into the door and the keyless entry broken years ago. Luckily, its only the passenger door so I just unlock it from inside but if it was the driver door I'd have to take the door apart to fix it.
detaro 9y ago

adrianpike 9y ago

Does anyone here have experience with Mender or similar? I'm looking to do some IoT work and over-the-air updates are still my biggest unsolved problem. I'd love any guidance on any good tools to research & investigate.

sjbase 9y ago

This type of headline is why large enterprises are often careful about working with unproven 3rd parties. And consequently why the enterprise sales cycle feels so slow and bureaucratic. LockState makes the mistake, and AirBnB takes collateral damage.