An Americans’ garage is one of those sacred suburban havens of automobiles and expensive tools, are probably more important to us than many of our online accounts. But some garages are only protected by a code whose security is equivalent to a two-character password. And security researcher Samy Kamkar can crack that laughable safeguard in seconds, with little more than a hacked child’s toy.
With a hacked child’s toy – your garage door can be opened in seconds!
“It’s a huge joke,” says Kamkar, as quoted by Wired. “The worst case scenario is that if someone wants to break into your garage, they can use a device you wouldn’t even notice in their pocket, and within seconds the garage door is open.”
What’s worse, is that many of us will lock the Garage door – but leave the connecting door from the garage to the house – unlocked! This means that an intruder to the garage could then have unfettered access to the rest of your house – the garage really does need to be secured!
Although Kamkar has made the source code for OpenSesame available to the public, it’s in a “bricked” state to prevent abuse. The security researcher explained: “It almost works, but just not quite, and is released to educate. If you are an expert in RF and microcontrollers, you could fix it, but then you wouldn’t need my help in the first place, would you?”
More helpfully, Kamkar has provided a video to help the public recognize if their garage door is susceptible to attack, and advises “rolling code” security systems are much more secure: