Neighbor Unlocks Front Door Without Permission With The Help Of Apple's Siri

The smart home is supposed to make our lives safer and more efficient, but it's clear the technology still has a long way to go.

According to a Reddit post by user "sportingkcmo," he had his house equipped with an August Smart Lock, a Bluetooth-enabled door lock that users operate using their phone, as well as Apple's HomeKit, which enables users to interact with smart home gadgets using Siri. According to his post, the user had set up his iPad Pro in the living room to connect to the lock through HomeKit.

Unfortunately, the setup opened up a huge security hole that serves as lesson of how smart home technology can backfire: His neighbor, who was coming by to borrow some flour, was able to let himself in by shouting, "Hey Siri, unlock the front door."

The iPad was apparently able to hear the neighbor's command through the front door and then sent the unlock command to the August Smart Lock. (The August Smart Lock also supports Amazon's voice assistant service, Alexa, but users can't unlock the door with Alexa. Users can only lock and check the status of the lock with Alexa.)

I've reached out to the Reddit user, but haven't heard back. (Update: I got in touch with the user. Read his story here.) I've also reached out to August and will update this post if I hear back. Apple said it recommends that all users have passcode authentication enabled on their devices. This could have been prevented if the user had set passcode authentication on the iPad.

This story raises serious questions about the security of smart home systems. Ceding such critical parts of the home (like the front door) to tech gadgets can pose major security risks. Voice control holds a lot of exciting possibilities but remains new and unexplored territory. In this case, the combination of voice technology with a smart lock system exposed a major vulnerability.

Apple introduced the HomeKit standard in 2014 and it has slowly gained adoption. At the iPhone 7 launch event earlier this month, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that more than 100 HomeKit devices are slated to launch this year alone. These are everything from smart door locks to thermostats to light bulbs all controllable by Siri.

As voice control and the smart home start taking off, we'll likely encounter more of these sorts of unintended consequences that could slow the adoption of the technology.

Correction: Amazon's voice assistant, Alexa, can only lock and check status of the lock. A previous version of this article stated it might be possible to also unlock the August Smart Lock using Alexa, similar to Siri.