August, Inc is a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

home automation Home automation or domotics is building automation for a home, called a smart home or smart house. A home automation system will monitor and/or control home attributes such as lighting, climate, entertainment systems, and appliances. It m ...

company, focusing on

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

connected door locks and doorbell cameras. The company was founded in November 2012 by

Yves Béhar Yves Béhar (born 1967) is a Swiss-born American designer, entrepreneur, and educator. He is the founder and principal designer of Fuseproject, an industrial design and brand development firm. Béhar is also co-founder and Chief Creative Office ...

and Jason Johnson. On October 19, 2017, Swedish lock manufacturer

Assa Abloy Assa Abloy AB is a Swedish conglomerate whose offerings include products and services related to locks, doors, gates, and entrance automation. Related products and services include controlling access and confirming identities with keys, cards, ...

announced an acquisition of August Home. The deal closed in December 2017. As of July 2018, August Home had sold over one million smart locks and cameras.

Products

In May 2013, August released their first smart lock. The lock had a metal frame and was controlled using

Bluetooth 4.0 Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limit ...

with a smartphone app. As with other August door locks, the device clips on to an existing deadbolt on the inside portion of a door, still allowing the use of a traditional key. A Wi-Fi bridge was later released allowing remote access to the lock, and the use of

virtual assistants Virtual may refer to: * Virtual (horse), a thoroughbred racehorse * Virtual channel, a channel designation which differs from that of the actual radio channel (or range of frequencies) on which the signal travels * Virtual function, a programming ...

(such as

Amazon Alexa Amazon Alexa, also known simply as Alexa, is a virtual assistant technology largely based on a Polish speech synthesiser named Ivona, bought by Amazon in 2013. It was first used in the Amazon Echo smart speaker and the Echo Dot, Echo Studio and ...

). In October 2015, the company debuted a suite of new products including a second generation smart lock, a

smart doorbell A smart doorbell is an internet-connected doorbell that notifies the smartphone or other electronic device of the home owner when a visitor arrives at the door. It activates when the visitor presses the button of the doorbell, or alternatively, wh ...

, and a keypad for users without a phone. The company also announced August Access, a platform to let couriers from

Postmates Postmates is a food delivery service, founded in 2011, and acquired by Uber in 2020. It offers local delivery of restaurant-prepared meals and other goods. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California. , Postmates operates in 2,940 U.S. c ...

, Handy, and other services get access to the lock through a one time code. The service was later expanded to include

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

in select U.S. markets. A

HomeKit HomeKit, also known as Apple Home, is a software framework developed by Apple Inc., made available in iOS and iPadOS that lets users configure, communicate with and control smart-home appliances using Apple devices. It provides users with a way ...

compatible version of the lock was also released the following year. A cheaper version of the smart lock was released in 2017, along with a

Z-Wave Z-Wave is a wireless communications protocol used primarily for residential and commercial building automation. It is a mesh network using low-energy radio waves to communicate from device to device, allowing for wireless control of smart home d ...

compatible version designed for professional installation. The new locks also added motion sensors to know whether the door is open or closed. The August Access platform expanded to include locks for

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

and

Emtek PT Elang Mahkota Teknologi Tbk, trading as Emtek, is an Indonesian technology, telecommunication and media conglomerate headquartered in Jakarta. As of 2013, it is Indonesia's second largest media company. It is the parent company for subsidiar ...

in January 2018.

Security concerns

In August 2016, a white-hat hacker showcased a vulnerability with August's one-time access codes allowing someone to use them once expired at

DEF CON DEF CON (also written as DEFCON, Defcon or DC) is a hacker convention held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first DEF CON took place in June 1993 and today many attendees at DEF CON include computer security professionals, journalists, lawyer ...

. The company patched the issue later that month. MIT conducted further research on potential vulnerabilities in the security of the device. They attempted accessing the device using multiple methods, none of which were successful. The methods they tested were the following: password attack, “I’m Not Listening” attacks, changing date and time settings, snooping Bluetooth packages, decompiling the app, sniffing TCP packets,

man-in-the-middle attacks In cryptography and computer security, a man-in-the-middle, monster-in-the-middle, machine-in-the-middle, monkey-in-the-middle, meddler-in-the-middle, manipulator-in-the-middle (MITM), person-in-the-middle (PITM) or adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) ...

, and retrieving owner permissions offline keys. Out of all of these attempts, only one was theoretically plausible. By snooping Bluetooth packets, persons with malicious intent could attempt a “ brute force” method by guessing the ciphertext necessary to unlock the door. However, the chance of guessing this combination of bits is one in over 18.4 quintillion, and the time required to attempt all sequences is projected to be over four years.

References

{{reflist Home automation companies 2012 establishments in California Products introduced in 2013 Companies based in San Francisco Lock manufacturers