Matt Blaze22h ago

Physical security and cryptography can learn from each other, part 11367:

Hotels wisely don't put the room number on guest keycards so if someone finds your card, they'd have to exhaustively search the hotel to find the room it opens.

Some hotels now have elevators programmed to only let you call the floor for which your keycard is coded, preventing guests from wandering to other floors.

But it also means the elevator can be used as an efficient oracle to determine the floor of a found key.

Show threadCan Acar22h ago
@mattblaze unfortunately, there are people who would interpret this to mean "it is now OK to print room numbers on keys".
Show threadJeff Grigg22h ago

@canacar @mattblaze

Yea; why not?
So many of the guests keep their key cards in the paper wrapper -- which has their room number on it. 🙄

Show threadme21h ago

@JeffGrigg @canacar @mattblaze

But how else will I remember what room I am in at midnight after a few drinks?

Everything looks the same.

Show threadBill Zaumen
@print @JeffGrigg @canacar @mattblaze I've seen worse than not remembering which room you were in. On a trip to southern France, I had to get up early on my final day to get to the airport. I took a cab. As I was about to get in some shirtless British guy, obviously up all night, was asking for help - he couldn't remember where his hotel was (and probably not its name either), and was quite rude when the driver couldn't help. I mentioned a map at the train station (if only to get rid of him)
Mar 27 at 4:22amWeb
Show threadme16h ago

@bzdev

Once In winter, we went wine tasting staying in cabins.

Followed by dinner and had a beer tasting paddle. I don't normally drink much.

The boys went for a walk, in the dark found a oval, then the pool. Of course we jumped in.

Cold and Dripping wet, ran back to the cabins. In the door, into the shower to turn it on to warm up. Went to go through the sliding door to the bedroom. It was stuck. Tried to get arm in to get it unstuck. Looked behind me to the kitchen table.
(Cont)

Show threadme16h ago

@bzdev

Hang on.

Thats not our stuff!

Clothing and alcohol bottles covered the table.

Through the door crack I could see there are two unknown girls in the double bed.

"Opps, Sorry, wrong cabin"

Turned shower back off and ran out still dripping.

Found right cabin open was. Had shower and got dressed. But then couldn't find the keys.

Retraced steps. Found them in the middle of the oval 45 minutes later.

Didn't tell the wife or the rest of the group we were with until a decade later.

Show threadtoni 11h ago
@canacar Friends were drunk and we saw them get into a taxi on the other side of the street from the hotel. Five minutes later, they were dropped off at the hotel by the taxi driver, who’d taken them around a few blocks.