Reverse Engineering a Mysterious UDP Stream in My Hotel (2016)

220 pointsposted a month ago
by bayesnet
(gkbrk.com)

29 Comments

dang

a month ago

Related. Others?

Reverse engineering a mysterious UDP stream in my hotel (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34912300 - Feb 2023 (179 comments)

Reverse engineering a mysterious UDP stream in my hotel (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26633792 - March 2021 (86 comments)

Reverse Engineering a Mysterious UDP Stream in My Hotel (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16197436 - Jan 2018 (15 comments)

Reverse Engineering a Mysterious UDP Stream in My Hotel - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11744518 - May 2016 (181 comments)

yunnpp

a month ago

It's just as good in 2026 - 2d. Imagine Santa delivering his goods and hearing a mysterious UDP stream and wondering, "Is my supply chain being disrupted?", only to then realize that it was just the owners' TV spying on him after it was left on standby instead being completely turned off.

gkbrk

a month ago

Author here, hi :^)

contingencies

a month ago

Since you appear to be Turkish what's your favourite Turkish food that is poorly known outside of the country? Also don't miss https://subseacables.blogspot.com/2025/12/fully-diverse-100g...

gkbrk

a month ago

"poorly known outside the country" rules out the main foods I like.

I love a good Kuymak [1] though, I think that's not too well known.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuymak

contingencies

a month ago

Nice, haven't tried that. Found a local cafe which looks very well run where it's a feature. On the list for next year! Happy New Year!

nicelunch

a month ago

Hi! Do you happen to have that elevator music saved? I'm curious what it sounded like.

gkbrk

a month ago

I had it saved, but it was 3-4 computers ago. I don't think I still have it, and if I did I wouldn't know where.

Aside from the article, I only found these scripts on my disk related to this project.

listen_2046.py and send_2046.py

https://gist.github.com/gkbrk/445929a854051203ee31afc7495c5a...

Sophira

a month ago

I'm curious now, did you develop the sending program at the same hotel, and if so, did it work?

(My guess is probably not, but you might DoS the other stream while you're sending your own.)

kogasa240p

a month ago

Lol asked the same thing on his website

bayesnet

a month ago

Thank you for writing one of my favorite blog posts of all time! I am curious: What is your favorite thing you’ve written?

runtimepanic

a month ago

This is the kind of curiosity that leads to the most interesting findings. Hotels are a perfect storm of shared networks, opaque vendor integrations, and “it just works” assumptions. A mysterious UDP stream could be anything from Chromecast-style discovery to IPTV control or some half-documented vendor heartbeat. What’s usually more revealing than the payload is the pattern: broadcast vs unicast, frequency, and who responds. Also a good reminder of how much ambient network noise we’re all swimming in without noticing.

kstrauser

a month ago

I LOLed at the ending. Nicely done!

I appreciate people posting negative results, too. The journey is the interesting part, and I like the humanity of saying "welp, at least now I know".

mingus88

a month ago

Yeah 99/100 times it’s gotta be mundane but wouldn’t it be interesting to spoof that traffic and play anything you wanted in the elevator?

kstrauser

a month ago

"That would be wrong. You totally should not do that."

But yes, absolutely!

eru

a month ago

Though in this case, it's actually more of a positive result? The author figured out what the data was. It just wasn't very exiting.

Dilettante_

a month ago

This is the shortest, yet still fully complete example of an article that scratches that itch. Awakening the "intellectual curiosity", documenting the steps, and finding the actual end of the matter. The mundanity of the revelation is like the icing on the cake.

deadbabe

a month ago

I wish there was a whole book of just random compiled stories like this.

JSR_FDED

a month ago

I love how tiny and to the point the Python scripts are. I bet if you asked AI to make these today the comments would be longer than these entire scripts. But I’m too bored by the idea to try it :-)

schmuckonwheels

a month ago

I was expecting to see a post bemoaning the lack of encryption on the elevator music...

7e22v837278gb1p

a month ago

Good hotel room hacking entertainment is provided in-house, in this case.

jiscariot

a month ago

I've read this one before, but this time it really hit home in how unlike most of the modern AI-emoji-filled-cringy-heading-20-page blog slop, it is. Very refreshing.

bobske4

a month ago

expecting a rick roll here

mikesale

a month ago

omg this is so my vibe! I used to read corrupted database files for a living and it was soooo much fun.

naikrovek

a month ago

Site is down, I think. :(