2025-12-13 –, Workshop Room 5
This work shop is all about hacking IR Exit Sensors, you know those touchless exit sensors you can wave your hand at it to open door? Previous work has shown that you can trigger those from the "wrong" side of the door, bypassing the door's outward facing security controls.
In this workshop will cover the practicalities of attacking these devices, include low tech techniques, using commonly available tools, and then scaling things up by making DIY high powered devices to open them through glass and around corners.
Overview
The aim of this workshop is to demystify IR exit sensors by breaking down exactly how they function and then using that understanding to open a door from the "secure" side. We'll begin with a deep dive into how these sensors detect humans and trigger access, looking at both the electronics and the infrared signals involved.
From there, we'll explore a range of techniques we can use to interact with or subvert these sensors, starting with low-tech methods that require minimal equipment (including magic cardboard). As the workshop progresses, we’ll use a Flipper to capture and replay signals.
We'll then move into studying the signals in more detail using spectrometers, oscilloscopes, and digital logic analysers, and go over a few circuit designs of DIY high-powered IR devices. This increased power will allow us interact with exit sensors positioned around corners. We'll finish by programming an ESP32 based device and test it against various sensors.
Prereqs
- A Linux based laptop or virtual machine with USB pass through
- Basic but working knowledge of C programming, Bash
- Minimal knowledge of electronics (e.g. you know what a resistor does)
I'm a red team operator with AmberWolf, and have a career of hacking all the things going back 17 years. As well as red teaming I'm into doing terrible things to network devices, bypassing disk encryption, hardware hacking, and social engineering.