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can you expand on what would have made it rock solid?


Well, from what I know of its failures:

- Use an industry-standard (for the time) crypto algorithm for cards, and use the biggest key size possible. As it stands, they use a (horrible) proprietary algorithm and 32-bit keys.

- Make the lock know which door it's actually for and encode a list of acceptable lists along with the code key values on the card. This prevents a card from one door from opening another door. Not a huge security issue, but it happens more often than you'd think.

- Use secure, authenticated protocols for programming the lock. This is really the critical part; unauthenticated, raw memory reads/writes are just not OK.


You were planning to do a Reddit AMA on reversing in General.

Did that ever happen? Have you written anything on that?


I did indeed -- http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/yeiac/iama_reverse_eng...

It went better than I could've ever imagined; it was topping the front page for a while! Seriously awesome experience.


And I thought it went very well--it answered all the questions that I was going to ask you via email.

Thanks for doing it.




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