If you’ve ever been inside an airport, university campus, hospital, government complex, or office building, you’ve probably seen one of HID’s brand of card readers standing guard over a restricted area. HID is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of access control systems and has become a ubiquitous part of many large companies’ physical security posture. Each one of those card readers is attached to a door controller behind the scenes, which is a device that controls all the functions of the door including locking and unlocking, schedules, alarms, etc.
In recent years, these door controllers have been given network interfaces so that they can be managed remotely. It is very handy for pushing out card database updates and schedules, but as with everything else on the network, there is a risk of remotely exploitable vulnerabilities. And in the case of physical security systems, that risk is more tangible than usual.
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