The torsion spring, not the operator (or motor), does the heavy lifting. Aesthetics aside, the big changes in today's 300-pound steel doors are in insulation. Tighter perimeter seals and sandwiched polyurethane panels get some doors' U-factors, which measure resistance to heat flow and air infiltration, down as low as 0.2. A door under 0.3 qualifies for a 2010 tax credit of up to $1500.1. Motor & Gears: The motor is typically about a 1/2-hp, 6-amp machine hooked to a 120-volt outlet—that's all it takes to overcome the inertia of a stopped door. The machine also slows a door in transit, preventing it from crashing to the garage floor.2. Drive Guide: This track (aka the T-rail) guides and shields the chain, screw or belt as it moves the door open and closed. It connects the operator to the trolley, which in turn is connected to the door.3. Height Adjustment: Operator settings determine the distance the door travels. The machine kicks in to arrest the door's motion or to make adjustments if a door isn't opening or closing completely.
The force of the door's motion can also be adjusted so the door stops moving if grabbed.4. Inverter & Battery: To allow smaller, more efficient motors, most garage-door operators use DC current. An inverter switches household AC power to DC, which is also used to charge a battery backup system that kicks in when the power is out.In the past, suburban burglars sometimes gained access to garages by using radio scanners to eavesdrop on a code transmission between a remote control and a garage door. Doors in the 1960s were easy targets—they used only one code. In the 1970s and '80s, code grabbers pilfered one of 256 codes that the remotes cycled through. "Since the mid-1990s, we've had rolling codes with billions of combinations," door-operator manufacturer Chamberlain's Paul Accardo says. "The remote sends a code to the receiver; it opens the door and creates a new code for the next time the door opens. Someone could still capture that code, but it won't be used again." Among the quietest (and costliest) drive options, the belt's Kevlar polymer body is molded into nubby teeth on one side.
These rotate through a gear on the operator top to pull the trolley.The cheapest and oldest technology, the bike-chain-style chain sits slightly slack when the door is open—at least 1/2 inch above the bottom of the T-rail. The chain makes a racket, but maybe that's a good thing when your teenagers are sneaking out.A continuous threaded shaft connects the operator to the trolley, and its arm reaches for the door. Its threads require biannual lubrication with silicone, and it wears out the trolley more quickly than the other options. But the screw is the Goldilocks drive—median price and noise level.Today, Overhead Door Corporation has five operational divisions – Access Systems Division (Overhead Door and Wayne Dalton), The Genie®Company, Horton Automatics, TODCO , Creative Door, and NationServe – all are heralded as industry leaders. Overhead Door has pioneered the industry, inventing the first overhead door in 1921 and the first electric opener in 1926. For over 90 years, the Overhead Door brand has stood for product quality, product expertise and professional service.
Today, Overhead Door’s nationwide network of over 450 authorized Ribbon® distributors still lead the way with innovative solutions and unmatched installation, service and support. In 1954, a small garage door business owner invented a wooden door that folded horizontally to store itself overhead. That invention marked the birth of the company that has become known for developing and introducing innovative ideas and commitment to designing and building new overhead door, storm protection and access systems products. Today, with its portfolio of quality, innovative products, Wayne Dalton effectively serves customer needs in North America and Europe. Genie’s roots go back to 1926 when the Alliance Manufacturing Company was founded as a maker of toys and motorized tools. Since the introduction of the first Genie® Screw Drive garage door opener in 1954, The Genie®Company has led the industry with products known for their innovation, reliability and safety. Today, Genie® is the number one recognized brand of garage door openers.
Horton Automatics™ services the commercial and industrial markets with a variety of automatic entrance systems. Based in Corpus Christi, Horton Automatics has been designing, manufacturing and selling automatic doors since 1960, when they developed the first automatic sliding door in America. Its customers include restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes, airports, hotels, casinos, office buildings, convenience stores, retail food stores and government buildings, to mention a few. TODCO® is the largest producer of upward acting doors for the transportation industry worldwide. Founded in 1957, TODCO manufactures and markets overhead and swing doors for trucks and transportation vehicles. TODCO is based in Marion, Ohio and serves customers from plants in Marion, Ohio and Tecate, Mexico. Creative Door Services Ltd. has a 45+ year history of supplying, installing, and servicing intelligent access solutions and security products in the residential, commercial, and industrial markets across Western Canada.
As an A+ accredited company with the Better Business Bureau of Canada and a multi-year Canadian Consumer Choice award winner, Creative Door has completed some of the largest and most challenging projects in the industry and offers unrivaled value, selection, expertise and service. NationServe is the largest corporately-owned garage door business that provides sales, installation and service of Wayne Dalton residential and commercial garage doors. Today, NationServe has 18 locations across the United States that are committed to being the premier garage door resource for homeowners, contractors, architects, and commercial property owners.The next time you press your wireless key fob to unlock your car, if you find that it doesn’t beep until the second try, the issue may not be a technical glitch. Instead, a hacker like Samy Kamkar may be using a clever radio hack to intercept and record your wireless key’s command. And when that hacker walks up to your vehicle a few minutes, hours, or days later, it won’t even take those two button presses to get inside.
At the hacker conference DefCon in Las Vegas tomorrow, Kamkar plans to present the details of a gadget he’s developed called “RollJam.” The $32 radio device, smaller than a cell phone, is designed to defeat the “rolling codes” security used in not only most modern cars and trucks’ keyless entry systems, but also in their alarm systems and in modern garage door openers. The technique, long understood but easier than ever to pull off with Kamkar’s attack, lets an intruder break into cars without a trace, turn off their alarms and effortlessly access garages. RollJam, as Kamkar describes it, is meant to be hidden on or near a target vehicle or garage, where it lies in wait for an unsuspecting victim to use his or her key fob within radio range. The victim will notice only that his or her key fob doesn’t work on the first try. But after a second, successful button press locks or unlocks a car or garage door, the RollJam attacker can return at any time to retrieve the device, press a small button on it, and replay an intercepted code from the victim’s fob to open that car or garage again at will.
“Every garage that has a wireless remote, and virtually every car that has a wireless key can be broken into,” says Kamkar. Thieves have used “code grabber” devices for years to intercept and replay wireless codes for car and garage doors. But both industries have responded by moving the ISM radio signals their key fobs use to a system of rolling codes, in which the key fob’s code changes with every use and any code is rejected if it’s used a second time. To circumvent that security measure, RollJam uses an uncannily devious technique: The first time the victim presses their key fob, RollJam “jams” the signal with a pair of cheap radios that send out noise on the two common frequencies used by cars and garage door openers. At the same time, the hacking device listens with a third radio—one that’s more finely tuned to pick up the fob’s signal than the actual intended receiver—and records the user’s wireless code. When that first signal is jammed and fails to unlock the door, the user naturally tries pressing the button again.
On that second press, the RollJam is programmed to again jam the signal and record that second code, but also to simultaneously broadcast its first code. That replayed first code unlocks the door, and the user immediately forgets about the failed key press. But the RollJam has secretly stored away a second, still-usable code. “You think everything worked on the second time, and you drive home,” says Kamkar. “But I now have a second code, and I can use that to unlock your car.” If the RollJam is attached to the car or hidden near a garage, it can repeat its jamming and interception indefinitely no matter how many times the car or garage door’s owner presses the key fob, replaying one code and storing away the next one in the sequence for the attacker. Whenever the RollJam’s owner comes to retrieve the device, it’s designed to have a fresh, unused code ready for intrusion. “It will always do the same thing, and always have the latest code,” says Kamkar. “And then I can come at night or whenever and break in.”
Kamkar says he’s tested the proof-of-concept device with success on on Nissan, Cadillac, Ford, Toyota, Lotus, Volkswagen, and Chrysler vehicles, as well as Cobra and Viper alarm systems and Genie and Liftmaster garage door openers. He estimates that millions of vehicles and garage doors may be vulnerable. But he says he believes the problem is rooted in the chips used by many of those companies: the Keeloq system sold by the firm Microchip and the Hisec chips sold by Texas Instruments. WIRED reached out one-by-one to each of those companies. All but a few have yet to respond. Liftmaster and Volkswagen declined to comment, and a Viper spokesperson said it’s trying to learn more about Kamkar’s findings. Cadillac spokesperson David Caldwell wrote in an email that Kamkar’s intrusion method “is well-known to our cyber security experts,” and he believes it works only with prior model year vehicles, “as recent/current Cadillac models have moved to a new system.” Kamkar isn’t the first, as Cadillac implies, to invent the RollJam’s method of jamming, interception and playback.
Security researcher Spencer Whyte wrote in March of last year that he’d created a similar device. But Kamkar says his refined RollJam is designed to better automate the attack Whyte used, without the need to attach the device to a laptop. And while Whyte appears to have kept the code for his tool under wraps, Kamkar plans to release his on Github, timed to his DefCon talk Friday. Kamkar also says that Cadillac may be correct that its newest vehicles aren’t subject to the attack. The latest version of Keeloq’s chips, which the company calls Dual Keeloq, use a system of codes that expire over short time periods and foil his attack. In fact, Kamkar says his goal with RollJam is to demonstrate to car and garage door companies that they need to make that upgrade to expiring codes, or leave their customers vulnerable to interception attacks like the one he’s demonstrated. After all, Kamkar points out, two factor authentication systems like Google Authenticator or RSA’s SecurID use codes that expire in seconds, while millions of car owners still protect their vehicles with vulnerable systems whose codes never expire.