We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges

Architecture and Background

Shawn Merdinger - We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges: Hacking Electronic Door Access Controllers In the security world, attacker physical access often means game over - so what happens if you can't trust your building's electronic door system? This presentation and paper explore attack surfaces and exploitation vectors in a major vendor of electronic door access controllers (EDAC).

Vulnerability Analysis

The main focus is on time-constrained rapid analysis and bug-hunting methodologies, while covering research techniques that assist in locating and targeting EDAC systems. In addition, a review of practical countermeasures and potential research activities in the EDAC space are covered.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

Attendees can expect an eye-opening experience regarding insecurities of critical systems controlling physical access to hospitals, schools, fire stations, businesses and other facilities. Shawn Merdinger is an independent security researcher based in the USA.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

In former corporate lives he worked with Cisco Systems' STAT (Security Technologies Assessment Team) and TippingPoint. His current security interests include VoIP, medical devices and embedded systems. Merdinger is a technical editor for Cisco Press and Pearson Publishing and has presented at security conferences such as ShmooCon, Hack-in-the-Box, OíReilly, CSI, NoConName, IT Underground, CONfidence and SecurityOpus. For copies of the slides and additional materials please see the DEF CON 18 Archive here: