Burglars hack door locks at Texas hotel

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HOUSTON, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- A Texas hotel says a number of break-ins were carried out by burglars who took advantage of a security vulnerability in electronic locks on its rooms.

The Hyatt House Galleria in Houston said a string of burglaries in September was carried out using a hack first discovered and demonstrated this summer by a software developer working for Mozilla.

The vulnerability affects locks manufactured by Onity, TG Daily reported Wednesday.

The Hyatt apparently became aware of the vulnerability in August, but said it took Onity months to develop a fix, and that Onity is asking hotels to pay for the hardware changes.

Cody Brocious, the Mozilla programmer who originally identified the hack, criticized Onity for their policy.

"If such a significant issue were to exist in a car, customers would likely expect a complete recall at the expense of the manufacturer," he said in a blog post. "I can't help but feel that Onity has the same responsibility to their customers, and to customers staying in hotels protected by Onity locks."

Matthew Allen Cook, 27, has been arrested after a laptop stolen from the hotel was located in a pawnshop and traced to him, TG Daily said.