this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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It's been echod several times in this thread already but:
Wireless and security are oil and water. They do not mix. This goes byond wifi. If your security system has wireless sensors (door, window, motion) - you aren't secure. Please do not buy smart locks.
Wireless cameras are not security - they are a convenience. A convenience for checking on the kids in the back or seeing if that package got delivered.
If it's not wired and powered it is at best a scarecrow and at worse an indicator that you have money and you feel secure.
Smart locks are fine. Your door isn't particularly secure with a regular lock. If they want in enough to bring tech, they are coming in anyway.
I don't disagree with that. If someone wants in they're coming in. 100% agreed. The trick is making your self less of an easy target and cutting down on easy ins.
My statement was pretty generic as there is a lot of nuance to locks and security. My concern lies mostly with the fact that you rarely have a suitable blending of the two technologies. Either a lock company buying a kit or an electronics company buying bulk locks. Or a company that does neither and is looking for another thing to peddle on Amazon.
Some of these locks have very poorly positioned relays. You can unlock them with a magnet. Others can be actuated using a simple emf generator. Ones with passcodes can be read with consumer grade ir sensors or determined by wear and fingerprints.
Reducing attack vectors is always preferred. But it is absolutely up to the end user where their balance between convenience and security lies.
A good deadbolt and key while average is still superior as it is only 3ish attack vectors: pick or impression, destruction of door/lock, and the trusty rock:
Most doors have poorly placed windows with standard glass in or next to them.
They busted the door off the hinges when they broke into my house once. One of your doors is an open in door... those are kick in doors as the guy was telling me when he replaced mine.
This is one thing I don’t understand- I was looking at getting a door replaced and they looked at me like I had two heads when I asked about reinforcement to make it difficult to kick in.
I’ve read the weak point is generally the jamb and of course it’s only thin wood. Steel reinforcement behind the jamb could make a huge difference, so why isn’t it common?
I’m not paranoid enough to do this with existing doors and of course don’t want the ugliness of a visible lock plate, but when I’m replacing a door, I want the option of one that is more difficult to kick in, rather than just a cheap cookie cutter install
Because the average consumer is an idiot and does not think about the various technicalities associated with their purchases.
we went with a fiberglass type that was suppose to have have bounce to it, so more force would return then be absorbed. It also had to open outwards and that made it weird for a long time.
Just put 4" screws through the hinges and the strike plates.
That’s the standard: cheap and easy. Every lock I’ve bought since I’ve owned a house has had this. Done.
But not enough. One of my doors was clearly kicked in for a previous owner, yet I saw long screws into the frame. That doesn’t guarantee they were there at the time but they might have.
Regardless, the jamb is thin wood not really supported by anything. Screwing the strike plate into the framing helps, but that doesn’t keep the jamb from buckling and breaking until the door is no longer held by the strike plate. Reinforcing that jamb can make a huge difference against a standard burglar.
How about a 60” steel reinforcement?
Or here are some good ideas - residential doors already have some of these covered by opening inward, rather than out
Over here (UK) it's pretty common for doors to be multi point locking, so you shut the door and lift the handle which engages a series of extra bolts between the door and frame, most commonly one at the handle then one at the top and bottom of the frame. The early PVC doors that introduced multi point locking did have an issue (poor construction) where people could kick out the middle panel leaving the frame in place, newer ones have improved it, and there are more expensive doors which are made of different materials, but will almost always feature multi point locking.
That’s a great idea too.
I’ve seen that in moves but never in real life, nor have I seen hardware for it at any home center I’ve been to
Our exterior doors are usually steel or more expensive are a heavy fiberglass, antique are wood, but always heavy duty. I guess I’ve seen flimsy doors in cottages or apartment conversions but I can’t imagine that passing building code for any permitted construction
Put a trampoline spring on the door so that it snaps back shut when they kick it in and it will be almost impossible to get in.
Smart locks are worse. They have all the insecurity of a regular lock, plus more methods of insecurity, plus more failure modes that will shut you out of your house.
Ehh, they sell models with no keyhole now. At least youre trading risks at that point.
Or in my case, the entire front door is made of glass...
Here in belgium our doors sacrifice everything in the name of marginally more security: fire safety, failure modes & maintainability, convenience, and protection from user error.
Each modern door has 2+ deadbolts + hooks, many times a strike plate that is a bit bit more crowbar resistant, etc... but the mechanism is all tied to the handle so you can't lock the door if the handle sticks because of lack of maintenance or -10C weather. This also is about 1500€ to replace if you break it trying to lock your door when it is sticking.
Many doors have no front handle, so if you leave your keys inside (even if you are just running to get the mail), you are locked out. If someone leaves the keys on the inside of the eurocylinder, you can't unlock it from the outside unless you bump the keys out which isn't too easy for someone who only has a key.
Finally, almost no doors nowadays have a deadbolt dials on the inside, so you have to lock it from inside with keys. This means that both someone who steals a key can lock you inside (see point 2) and also it is a huge fire hazard because you can't open the door from the inside without a key. You either have to hope that you aren't too blind and dazed from smoke during a fire to find the keys, get them in the lock, and get outside, or leave the keys in the lock and completely negate the security benefit of having no deadbolt dial + the added inconvenience of another person living there unable to get inside if they come home later.
Then, on my door and many other modern doors here the security that they sacrifice so much functionality for is negated in any case because there is a 60x180cm double glass pane that they can simply break through. It is literally the worst system I have ever come across lol
Technically, some criminals will see it and pass on the house assuming there is an alarm system. The failure modes is a good point though.
Most smartlocks have a bypass lock for power cuts etc. that is shockingly easy to pick.
Regardless of how easy they are you pick, every house has giant holes cut in the walls with nothing but a couple panes of glass separating the inside from the outside.
Do you mean windows?
Time to put linux in my walls
Those are just dumb.
I have a smart lock that is just on the inside, there is nothing outside to indicate a smart lock.
Yes, someone could hack into my home assistant and open the door, but with that level of skill they would be earning 6 figures in a red team somewhere, not stealing my raspberry Pis and IKEA furniture...
Most regular door locks are easy to pick.
isn't that the equivalent to having an unlock button on your front door.
It’s not just that your lock won’t work if there’s no power but most of these seem to be battery powered, so you face this issue every few months. In case of a power outage or dead battery, is it better to be locked out or better to prioritize people’s safety
While “fail safe” sounds bad that your door is now unlocked, remember that it’s only on a power outage or dead battery, depending on configuration. It’s not like a thief can really plan for it, especially if it means planning for you to have a dead battery. It’s up to you how long it stays like this before you replace the battery, and it really should be a very small percentage of time. It’s not as bad as it first seems
there was show hosted by reformed burglars. One of the things they look for was expensive things in the front yards, being in planned community with few roads going into or out of. To get past home camera they wore hats and kept looking down, and just showed up in a lawn care or pool cleaning van.
And if you look at police report and court cases, do these camera make catching thieves more likely? No they don't
I don't love somewhere where people dress up as Scooby Doo villains to break into houses, I live in a place where people go house to house at 1 am and try door handles on cars and garages. A motion light and a camera does more to stop those people than anything else.
If someone wants to stage an organized heist, then yea, my camera isn't doing shit, but neither are my door locks, or a bolted down safe. At that point it is just an insurance game.
Was it It Takes A Thief? I remember that show; it was actually pretty interesting
Yes that was it
if they have a wifi jammer they have spray paint
Low tech solution sure - you need to walk up to the camera and would need the location of any cameras that would potentially catch you as you scooter around tagging the cameras. Advantage is you are 100 sure the cam can't see you.
Deauth attacks work very well and don't require you to nuke all of the wireless space.
There's a variety of different attacks. Admittedly destroying the camera is more or less a sure thing hah.
Here in belgium it is illegal to have hidden security cameras. You also have to put up a visible sign if you have them.
Location of the cameras here is easy lol
There is an advantage to advertising their existence: the sign itself may act as a deterrent and may motivate a thief to pick a softer target.
This of course is assuming you don't need a sign for each camera with an arrow pointing to it... at that point perhaps just a big dog would be a better choice hah.
Many cameras record to a SD card, deauth won't do much.
Sure there may be a hard copy but that will only have value after the crime is committed. Deauth / jamming will prevent the more meaningful things like proximity alerts and notifications from informing the user (or security system) which could lead to intervention.
I've always viewed camera storage as a fallback in the event something fails. Don't get me wrong I think redundancy is great and it's a fine feature. It has value - just less so in this particular case.
You could set up an alert for "hey, all my security cameras just misteriously disconnected"...
Not advocating for wireless security solutions, just saying it's not so hopeless.
That would definitely be a good approach if you were stuck with the wireless option. Im sure some software may address those disconnections in just the way you describe.
My responses have been looking at the technology broadly - in the way I might if someone asked me for my opinion prior to investing in gear. People frequently overestimate the effort required to achieve a bypass of a security device. So my goal was to provide some core knowledge.
I do like the suggestion though- it may help somone improve their own existing setup 👍
That is a true statement. You can't have both securtiy and wireless (convenience).
Every wirelessly transmitted signal, whether it is your network signal or bluetooth, can be intercepted from afar. It is even possible to encrypt the accoustic signal emitted from a needle printer and determine what has been printed because every letter/word emits a specific sound pattern. Sound travels wirelessly. This link from 2009 refers to that. Unfortenately it is written in German and I didn't find anything in English, but you could translate it.
Edit: typos 2 nd Edit: Addition: Needle printers are still in use - at least in Germany - for printing prescriptions at doctor's offices, among other things. The paper used for that provides a (physical) carbon copy.