iPhones Will Reportedly Get the Power To Unlock Doors Using NFC (engadget.com)

The iPhone's NFC chip will soon have the ability open your house's and car's doors, as well as pay for your fare, reports The Information. From a report: The tech giant is reportedly gearing up to introduce a huge update for its devices' near-field communication chip, which is (at the moment) mostly used to make purchases via Apple Pay. Its employees already have access to the new features, the publication says, and have apparently been using their iPhones to access offices and buildings at Apple's HQ in Cupertino. While you can use iPhones to open a lot of smart locks via Bluetooth, NFC is considered the more secure option. According to the publication's sources, Apple has been working with HID Global, the company that made its security systems, to give iPhones the capability to gain access to buildings and offices since 2014. The company has reportedly been talking to transit card maker Cubic for years, as well.

Comments

Another wonderful Apple innovation

[spiritplumber]

my Android phone from 2014 has that.

Re:Another wonderful Apple innovation

[swillden]

my Android phone from 2014 has that.

And in how many hotels could you use it yet ?

Any that have NFC-capable door locks. I doubt there are many (if any) of those, though, because until this update only Android phones could operate them. Hotels have used Bluetooth for their digital key systems, because it would work with all mobile devices. Not that iPhones are catching up, maybe we'll see hotels switching to NFC.

Re:Another wonderful Apple innovation

[Applehu Akbar]

Your Android phone has also been exposed to malware since at least then. Not a good idea to have malware that can open doors.

Oh Goodie!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now Apple(and whoever they sell the information to) can know where I live, what time I got home, what time I left, what mode of transport I took, what I bought and where, and criminals can now hijack not just my bank account but my home, my car and my transit pass horrraaa!

Re:Oh Goodie!

[TheFakeTimCook]

Now Apple(and whoever they sell the information to) can know where I live, what time I got home, what time I left, what mode of transport I took, what I bought and where, and criminals can now hijack not just my bank account but my home, my car and my transit pass horrraaa!

You have Apple confused with Google.

Give them the keys

[jabberw0k]

once Microsoft Amazon Google Apple (MAGA) convince you to discard your books, your music discs, your house keys, your car keys, and the ability to pay for anything other than through them -- the enslavement will be complete. Now be a good citizen and comply... your papers, please?

Apple Hardware Program

[monkeyxpress]

I understand why Apple locked down hardware interfaces on their devices back when you plugged most accessories into the bottom of your phone, but why do they still continue to do it now in the era of wireless? For example, the Bluetooth interface still doesn't let you open a serial port profile with another Bluetooth device unless you have paid silly amounts of money to get your product through MFI. What bad thing is my app accessing a wireless bluetooth serial port device going to do that I cannot do with a TCP/IP port onto the internet?

They relaxed things a tiny bit with BTLE, but they ensured the data rates on this were painful slow to the point of excluding a huge class of use cases. And then they ditched the headphone jack which removed a common hack used to get a signal in/out of iDevices. A whole world of external devices controlled by your phone would have been available to use years ago if Apple had had a reasonable wireless hardware policy (or at least had simplified its MFI program - you can't even find out how much it costs until you sign your life away).

Again, I totally understand the original motivation for regulating hardware devices, but with most of the devices people want to connect to being wireless that now seems redundant, and since Apple doesn't appear to be interested in building their own IOT ecosystem, I don't even see what they are gaining financially from the situation. If they opened up the bluetooth SPP there would an explosion in hardware gadgets that you can control with your iPhone.

Re:Apple Hardware Program

[phantomfive]

There is institutional fear within Apple of losing control of their own system.

NFC is NOT "more secure"

[johnjones]

NXP pretty much owns NFC so its a standard where you pay one company...

Apple previously has only allowed reading from a NFC chip and restricted the ability to write/respond to Apple pay

If apple opens this up then why would banks use or sign up for "Apple pay" ? (spoiler they wont)

  the smart thing to do would to engage the phones bluetooth controller via NFC and have bluetooth open the door.
(this solves the locality issue where bluetooth controller is not sure if you wish to open the door or has to constantly ping wondering if its near the door and if you wish to open it)

Also Bluetooth allows you to choose your own encryption and Apple have a standard already for doors ("Homekit" which has strong encryption ) this would be a simple extension of homekit for offices which would be an additional revenue model...

Officekit - you heard it here first...

regards

John Jones

oh good

[cascadingstylesheet]

I was hoping to bring the airtight security of smart phones to my car and dwelling.

Meh

[nospam007]

Sorry, but I put a NFC sticker inside my iPhone case years ago, thereby enabling it to open my front door.

I'd prefer an app to identify the owners of all those cats who come visiting my porch every day.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that these stickers are just wirelessly readable and writable memory devices, don't you? There's nothing preventing someone from copying the data and presenting it to the lock. There are smart cards with embedded processors that can do actual cryptographic authentication, but the NFC stickers are not of that kind.

Welcome to 2013!

[LynnwoodRooster]

NFC on Android has been around for 5 years. Apple is once again lagging Android, and going to try to spin it as "revolutionary" even though 75% of all smart phones have been doing this for half a decade.

Courage?