Hello,
I am working on a private client's case and the client gave me an digital hotel room entry card. I will be thankful if anyone can give me some pointers as to what kind of information I can get from the card and how to get it.
Thanks,
akkas
Hello,
I am working on a private client's case and the client gave me an digital hotel room entry card. I will be thankful if anyone can give me some pointers as to what kind of information I can get from the card and how to get it.
Depends on what kind of card it is – smartcard, or RFID card? NFC? Or perhaps something else? Can you identify it?
For example, some RFID hacks were presented at Black Hat some years ago – there was one involving an Arduino system to steal the card information silently from people as they walked by.
Hello,
I am working on a private client's case and the client gave me an digital hotel room entry card. I will be thankful if anyone can give me some pointers as to what kind of information I can get from the card and how to get it.Thanks,
akkas
Hi akkas, the first question I have is do you know which hotel it belongs to? If so it might be possible to simply take the card to a receptionist there and get it scanned against the machine that they typically use to program the card - as you're probably aware most larger modern hotels now simply have a box of 'blank' keycards and issue them individually against whatever room number you get when you check in. Obviously I have no idea of the type of case here, possibly if the hotel won't play ball a subpoena or similar could be sought, otherwise you might be at the end of this avenue of enquiry. At best this might get you the room number and a date/time of check in.
If you can get the room number, then you could potentially get CCTV for the relevant time of check in - then you can put a name and a face to the card. Again, if you can get the information you need out of the hotel management you could get an address, passport number etc.
Of course, if you have no idea what hotel it belongs to, that's more complex - if you have some idea what city it could be from then it might involve good old-fashioned detective work going hotel to hotel if it's of enough value to know. If you don't even know an approximate geographical location you might get lucky looking at the types of cards that the large chains use e.g. Hilton - perhaps they are all the same system nationwide or worldwide?
As mentioned, a number of technologies could be contained in the card - realistically even if you guess the right one and successfully read it somehow, I am willing to bet that it's pretty basic information - some kind of Unique Identifier which represents a room number and not a lot else. Possibly some of the more sophisticated systems would cross-reference this UID against the hotel system when it is scanned at the door to work out whether the access is valid, so when you check out of the hotel it becomes useless and cannot simply be re-used to get back in your old room. So very possibly in addition to your room number you just might get a date and time of check in and/or check out, but I seriously doubt there would be anything that connects an individual or hotel with this data so realistically it might be of quite limited value.
Good luck and update the thread if you can - sounds like an intriguing situation.