Smart lock protocol

Simon Peeters simonpeeters90 at gmail.com
Mon Mar 9 10:00:24 EDT 2015


Hi all,

I’m working on a electronics project to lock and unlock my door via my
phone (with Bluetooth). It works well but it’s unsafe since I just send the
lock and unlock command in cleartext, without authentication or encryption.
I would like to add authentication to this so that only I can enter the
house. I should be able to give friends/family access and revoke the access
remotely (without being in Bluetooth range). I also would like to give
other people (e.g. the cleaning lady) temporary access ("each Wednesday
between 1pm and 5pm”). Since I would like to do this remotely I think I
would need a server.

I remember the protocol Kerberos from my crypto class which seems like it
would get the job done. I went to talk to two post-docs at the cryptology
departement of the university where I study and they were convinced
Kerberos was overkill in this situation. I’m not sure if they are correct
though, since they didn’t seem to have a lot of experience with it. So my
question is whether this really is overkill and whether another protocol
would be a better fit for this?

Thanks in advance!

Simon


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