I look forward to reading the breakdown on how bad the security for this system ends up being.<p>I can see it now - each lock would be connected to the hotel's wpa-wps network (shared with the guests of course) and use a dhcp server without static routes to assign IP addresses. Maybe if we're really lucky they'll be using some consumer-grade cisco switch with last year's firmware update.<p>Snark aside, they have to be _really_ careful not to fuck this up. There's so many potential attack vectors in this kind of system it's nuts.
non-paywall link <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fhilton-books-upgraded-technology-1406503197%3Fmod%3Dyahoo_hs&ei=f-nWU4eKIartigKe3YCYBg&usg=AFQjCNFcjyFQ8rmrFmCCsRcv2ITZdPu1hA&sig2=OT1a7qibk-SPLsD-VVyz9g&bvm=bv.71778758,d.cGE" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...</a>
I guess the obvious concern is with someone figuring out a way to turn any smartphone into a key to enter any room; I'm guessing it would be easy to do given access to the person's email? Hopefully they make sure that it's done right the first time before any kind of incident.
OR not AND? Man I guess if I have to choose I'll choose to use it as a key, and pick my room via my laptop.<p>Now if you could use the smartphone to do both, You might be able to choose the room to have keys to, even if that room was not yours.<p>Ok, more serious. I like the idea of this. I have several AirBnB properties, and this could make my life a lot easier. Though at the same time my Girlfriend always finishes the night with her iPhone completely dead, so it could also make things a lot more complicated.<p>All in all I like the convenience, and fear the security.