Door Industry Journal - Winter 2016

Also online at: www.dijonline.co.uk 66 THE door industry journal winter 2016 garage doors Almost every day there seems to be something in the news about the latest company to be hacked or articles questioning the security of IOT (Internet of Things) connected devices. But what about the radio controls fitted to automated garage doors and gates? British homeowners considering an automated garage door purchase are likely to have done a lot of research on the subject prior to seeking quotes. One of the questions that may result from this research is about the security level claimed by garage door manufacturers. Whilst it may be considered difficult to ask searching questions about an automated garage door’s resilience to code grabbers and digital jammers, it is certainly something that should be explored because many brands have different radio control technology. In the sections that follow we have charted the history of remote controls revealing how secure both early and present day garage door operators are, raising the question as to whether owners of older automated garage doors need to be concerned. How Garage Door Security Technology Has Evolved Garage doors are certainly more secure than they used to be, following significant improvements made over the last 8 to 10 years to how automated garage doors work. Technical advancements include the implementation by manufacturers, such as Hörmann, Garador, Marantec, Seip, Sommer and Liftmaster, of rolling code technology and adoption of 418 MHz, 433 MHz and the more up to date 868 MHz remote control frequencies. With rolling code technology, the code on which remote controls work is modified with each individual door activation using a slightly different frequency. The code rolls onto the next random code for the next and subsequent door cycle. This technology evolved out of necessity following an increasing number of houses in the same neighbourhoods having popular brand remote control garage doors installed. Dipswitches Used to Expand the Range of Door Frequencies It was typical in 1960’s America for owners of remote control hand transmitters to accidently open their neighbour’s garage door due to the range of door frequencies being very limited. Even in the late 1970’s, here in the UK, some early garage door openers were sold with dedicated code handsets for which there were as few as 10 frequency variants! Comments such as this were commonplace back then: “I came home and found my garage door open. Little did I know that the Jacksons next door had bought the same model of garage door operator last week.” Manufacturers’ quickly implemented 9 dipswitches in the handsets to allow owners to set switch values of 0 or 1, allowing for a total of 512 different radio frequencies. Later a 12-dipswitch system was added to provide a total of 4096 different radio frequencies. The corresponding dipswitch combination was set in the motor itself, which received the signal. Homeowners were also free to set their own combinations. Modified Children’s Toy Allows 70’s and 80’s Doors to Be Easily Opened Technology enthusiasts discovered that a simple Mattel ‘I’m-Me’ children’s toy could be modified to send out all the frequency combinations to a garage door over a very short space of time, initially taking approximately 30 minutes to scan for a result. Potentially a burglar could sit outside a property in a car, within the normal 50 metre range of the transmitters, and wait until the unit emitted the correct frequency to open the door. However, the likelihood of the average burglar being able to harness such technology without programming experience or a more in-depth understanding of electronics is slim. Improved versions got the scan time down to 6 minutes. The waiting time was usually much less however, because the receivers that accept the signal from the hand transmitter and trigger the motor to open the door, used a bit shift register which meant that once it received just part of the code it would activate. How Secure Are Remote Controlled Garage Doors? Garage Door Security: Technology vs Common Sense