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

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".

Author here, hi :^)

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)

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.

Archive link as it seems the site is down: https://archive.is/afYvQ

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.

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

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

Site is down, I think. :(

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 :-)

Web server down? Can’t access.

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

expecting a rick roll here

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.