For those who use smart locks, just so you know, you might want to get a neodymium magnet and see whether the relay is close enough to the casing wall to be activated externally.
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Lockpicking Lawyer has reviewed several of these types of locks. They often have their logic processing located on the exterior side of the door and use a relay to control an external unlock mechanism.
In contrast, most consumer smart locks have the logic processing on the interior side of the door, with the exterior side only containing a keypad. Additionally, smart deadbolts typically use a motor to unlock rather than a relay switch.
I don’t watch many LPL videos (since they tend to cover similar things), but when he reviews consumer smart locks, he usually bypasses the smart features entirely and focuses on picking the backup cylinder instead.
I make my career installing hotel locks, including the wall readers that open doors with electric strikes, magnetic locks, or other openers (such sliding doors). Even when the logic processing is done directly at the reader, all good ones have the relay located far away from the reader (usually ranging from 6 to 30 feet).
Relay-driven locks aren’t very common in the smart home market, though.
Which lock and reader model are you using?
Yes, I do have an electric strike on my external gate at home. Although it’s interesting to try, I don’t think my relay lives close to the strike, thus this is probably a low-urgency issue. It would be impressive if you could get an August to turn a deadbolt with a magnet.
Kind of makes sense to have an external method for opening a hotel swipe lock. It’s possible that occasionally a glitch causes the controller to become unresponsive, and it would be a poor design choice if opening the door required tearing it down. However, for obvious reasons, you don’t want just anybody to be able to find it out.
Generally speaking, smart locks are a huge call. Some cheap, shoddy smartlocks, in my opinion, can.
For example, none of the subpar Tuya ones will be immune to this kind of assault. Anything that is constructed like a deadbolt won’t break since the motor can’t be driven to retract the bolt. The attack solely targets locks where the relay allows the bashplate to release.
Those kinds of locks are probably extremely uncommon in homes. That’s what you see in business environments. Almost all widely used smart locks for homes are still deadbolts.
This isn’t how most commercial locks operate either. An access control device receives a code from the card or fingerprint readers. After determining whether the code is valid, that gadget shuts off the relay. If not, the lock is directly accessible to the reader.
This lock is merely pathetic.
These are extremely shoddy systems. The most popular ones merely gather credentials on the keypad rather than storing all the intelligence there. A controller board located somewhere in the building then provides a power signal to the latch.