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Box of Secrets: Discreetly modding an apartment intercom to work with Apple Home

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Why This Matters

This article highlights how tech-savvy individuals can discreetly modify existing apartment intercom systems to integrate with modern smart home platforms like Apple Home, addressing security and functionality gaps. Such modifications demonstrate the importance of security awareness and innovation in the smart home industry, empowering consumers to enhance their home automation capabilities. However, it also underscores the need for manufacturers to prioritize security to prevent unauthorized access.

Key Takeaways

My friend Frank (not his real name) hosts a lot of guests at his apartment, and his complex’s intercom is what ushers them inside. You’ve probably seen them before, they look like this:

The Doorking 1834-080 intercom at Frank's apartment.

Up until recently, guests could find Frank’s number in the system and give it a call. If Frank recognized the people on the line, he would press a number on his dial pad, which the controller would interpret as a signal to unlock the gate.

Then, management got lazy. The complex Frank lives in failed to renew their intercom’s cellular service, so it could no longer make calls for the voice system. Even after months of asking his landlord to fix it, nothing was done.

Help Arrives

My other friend Hazel and I arrived to visit Frank during this outage period, and he asked us to see what we could do. Here’s what we saw:

A diagram of what we saw.

We inspected the top box closer, giving a promising result: it was unlocked! The general layout of the box is as follows:

A diagram of the voice box with wires shown.

It was impossible to ignore the massive Wi-Fi/cell router in the top corner with its admin password printed right on it (not pictured). Of course, I had to investigate.

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