Are Smart Locks Really Safe from Hacking?

8 min read ·

Executive Summary

If you’ve ever stood at your front door juggling grocery bags, coffee, and your phone—only to realize your keys are somewhere at the bottom of your bag—you already understand why smart locks are so tempting.

Keyless entry, app control, voice assistants, guest access… what’s not to love?

Then the thought hits:

“Wait… am I basically putting a computer on my front door? Can someone hack this thing?”

Totally fair question.

In this guide, we’ll walk through:

The realistic hacking risks smart locks face (not movie-plot stuff)
What things like signal jamming, replay attacks, and credential theft actually look like in real life
How smarter biometrics—especially palm vein recognition—change the game
What to look for in a secure smart lock (without reading a cybersecurity textbook)
Simple, practical ways to protect your smart home today

We’ll also use the Lockin Veno Palm Vein Recognition Smart Lock as a down-to-earth example of how modern smart locks try to balance convenience with serious security—without turning your weekend into an IT project.

Introduction: Your Front Door Is the New Login Screen

Think about how your habits have quietly upgraded over the last few years:

You probably use a password manager now.
You’ve turned on two-factor authentication for at least one important account.
When your phone nags you about updates, you grudgingly install them because you know they fix security issues too.

Now take that mindset and stick it on your front door. That’s what happens when you install a smart lock: your door stops being just hardware and becomes a kind of “login screen” to your home.

Some people are all in:

“I can let my dog walker in from my phone, no more hiding keys under rocks, and my porch lights turn on when I unlock the door—sold.”

Others get a little nervous:

“If it’s online, does that mean someone can sit in a car outside and hack my door open?”

Both reactions are completely normal—and honestly, both contain some truth:

Yes, smart locks introduce new digital risks.
Also yes, a good smart lock can be more secure than a traditional deadbolt that can be picked, bumped, or opened with a five-dollar copy of your key.

The goal isn’t to avoid smart tech. The goal is to choose the right tech and set it up the right way.

Market Insight: Why Smart Locks Attract Both Homeowners and Hackers

Smart locks aren’t just for techies anymore. They’ve gone mainstream because they fix everyday annoyances:

Constantly losing keys (and paying to rekey the house… again)
Needing to give short-term access to guests, cleaners, dog walkers, or Airbnb visitors
Wanting your front door to talk to your smart lights, cameras, and alarm system
Making life easier for kids, older family members, or anyone with mobility challenges

But here’s the flip side: anything that controls who can physically walk into your home—and talks to Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, or standards like Matter/Thread—naturally gets a hacker’s attention too.

Why Attackers Care

Opportunistic theft
Most burglars are lazy in a very practical way. They look for the easiest target:
- Unlocked doors
- Flimsy deadbolts
- Open windows
If your smart lock (and door) puts up more resistance than your neighbors’ houses, they’re likely to keep walking.
Curiosity / bragging rights
Security researchers and hobbyists sometimes poke at smart locks to see what breaks:
- Many of them disclose issues responsibly so they get fixed.
- Others just want to say, “I got this thing to do something weird.”
Targeted attacks
This is the movie-plot stuff—going after a specific person:
- Much rarer for everyday homeowners.
- More likely if you’re high-profile, wealthy, or in a sensitive job.

Bottom line: most break-ins are still low-tech. But if you’re putting a computer on your door, it’s worth knowing what the realistic digital risks look like—and how to stay ahead of them.

The Real Digital Threats: How Smart Locks Can Be Attacked

Let’s skip the hype and talk through the attacks that actually matter for smart locks and smart homes.

1. Signal Jamming (Blocking, Not Breaking In)

Imagine trying to have a conversation in the middle of a rock concert. You’re still you, your friend is still your friend, but you literally can’t hear each other.

That’s basically signal jamming.

What it is:
An attacker uses a radio device to drown out the signals between your smart devices—like the Bluetooth or Wi‑Fi between your phone and your lock.

What jamming can do:

Temporarily stop your phone from talking to your lock
Disrupt wireless cameras, alarms, or door sensors

What jamming can’t do by itself:

Magically unlock your door
Steal your PIN, fingerprint, or palm pattern

It’s more of a “block the signal” move than a “hack the system” move. A burglar might jam cameras or alarms during a break-in—but they still have to physically beat your lock and door to get inside.

How a good smart lock defends itself:

It fails secure: if the signal dies, it stays locked, not unlocked.
It lets you unlock offline: keypad, mechanical key, or stored biometrics.
Its hardware is designed and tested to handle radio interference gracefully.

For example, the Lockin Veno combines anti-interference design with BHMA Grade 2 mechanical security. Translation: even if the digital “airwaves” get noisy, your door hardware behaves like a solid, well-built traditional lock.

2. Replay Attacks & Signal Capture

Picture someone secretly recording you saying “open sesame” to a magic door and then playing that same recording later to get in.

That’s the idea behind a replay attack.

What it is:
An attacker captures the wireless communication between your phone and your lock, then replays that exact signal later, hoping the lock treats it like a fresh command.

Here’s where modern tech steps in.

Most decent smart locks protect against this with things like:

Rolling codes – the “secret handshake” changes every time, like modern car key fobs.
Session-based encryption – each conversation between your phone and lock is tied to a one-time value, so a replay doesn’t make sense anymore.

Without these protections, replay attacks can work. With them, a recorded message becomes about as useful as last week’s one-time password.

What you want to see:

Mentions of strong encryption (often described as “bank‑grade” or calling out AES/TLS)
Secure Bluetooth/Wi‑Fi pairing
Integration with secure ecosystems and standards like Matter over Thread

The Veno’s support for Matter, plus secure Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth, signals that it’s built around up-to-date communication standards—especially important when it plays nicely with Apple Home, Google Home, and Alexa, which all enforce fairly strict security rules.

3. Credential Theft: The Biggest Real-World Risk

Here’s the part nobody wants to hear, but everyone needs to:

The most common way into a “smart” anything isn’t Hollywood-style hacking. It’s someone just logging in with your username and password.

How that happens in real life:

You click a fake login link that looks like your smart home app or email.
Your phone has malware that quietly grabs notifications or passwords.
You reuse your favorite password across multiple sites—and one of those sites gets breached.
You keep your unlock code or Wi‑Fi password in a note titled “front door PIN” on your phone.

Once someone has your account:

They might unlock your door from anywhere.
Or sneakily add their own phone or code as an authorized user.

This isn’t unique to smart locks—it’s the #1 problem across almost every digital system.

How to protect yourself:

Use unique, strong passwords for your smart lock and smart home accounts.
Turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) wherever it’s offered.
Don’t give out your main login—use guest access or secondary users instead.
Keep your phone and your lock’s firmware updated.

Architecture matters here too. With smart locks like Veno that keep biometric data on the lock itself (not uploaded to the cloud), even if your account is compromised, someone can’t just clone your palm vein data onto another device.

4. App & Cloud Vulnerabilities

Behind most smart locks, there’s a mini ecosystem:

A mobile app for control and configuration
A cloud service for remote access, notifications, and logs
Optional integrations with Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa, SmartThings, and more

Each of those is a potential weak link if it’s not done right.

Possible problems include:

Sloppy server configuration or outdated software
Insecure APIs for third-party integrations
Access tokens that never expire or are overly broad

You don’t need to become a cloud engineer to manage this. Just be picky.

How to lower the risk:

Choose brands that are open about security and play in the big leagues (Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung all have review processes and minimum security requirements).
Favor locks where critical data—especially biometrics—is stored locally, not in mystery servers you’ll never see.
Actually install firmware and app updates when they pop up.

Lockin’s Veno series leans into this by using on-device storage for sensitive data and skipping extra subscriptions or required AI hubs—fewer moving parts, fewer things to break or be attacked.

5. Biometric Spoofing: Face, Fingerprint… and Palm Veins

Biometric locks always raise the same question:

“What if someone fakes my fingerprint or face and gets in?”

It’s not a crazy concern.

Fingerprint and basic face unlock systems can be fooled if they’re not well implemented:

High-res photos
Lifted fingerprints from a glass
2D images tricking simple facial recognition

That’s why how biometrics are done matters.

Palm vein recognition plays a different game:

It uses near‑infrared light to scan the veins under your skin.
Those vein patterns are unique and internal—you don’t leave them on every glass you touch.
Good systems also look at depth or blood flow, making it extremely hard to spoof with a picture or a fake hand.

The Lockin Veno’s Venokey™ system is built around this idea. It claims:

Very high accuracy (think “door opens when it’s supposed to, not when it’s not”)
An ultra‑low chance of accepting the wrong person
Reliable performance with wet, oily, dusty, or aging hands

That last bit matters because a lot of “secure” systems fall back to weaker methods (like a PIN) when they get picky about fingers or faces. Palm vein works in more real‑life situations, so you’re less tempted to pass around codes like candy.

And again: palm veins leave no visible trace behind. Fingerprints… do.

Beyond Hacking: Physical and Environmental Risks Still Matter

It’s easy to get hung up on hacking and forget something basic:

Your smart lock is still a physical lock on a physical door.

If the door is weak or the lock is flimsy, no amount of encryption will save you.

Physical Security Standards You Should Actually Care About

Look for:

BHMA/ANSI ratings (Grade 1–3: Grade 1 is top tier, Grade 2 is very solid for homes)
Solid metal construction, protection against drilling and prying
A proper strike plate with long screws that bite into the framing, not just the trim

The Veno is rated BHMA Grade 2, which is a serious residential rating. That’s important because, in the real world, most break-ins are still:

A kicked-in door
A crowbar attack on the lock area
A broken side window followed by a hand reaching in

Your digital security is only as good as your mechanical backbone.

Weather, Power & Everyday Reliability

A “hack” you will absolutely notice? Your lock not working when you need it.

Look for:

Weather resistance that can handle rain, dust, and temperature swings
A temperature range that survives your local winters and summers
Long battery life and clear low‑battery alerts
Backup power options and mechanical overrides

The Veno line is designed to handle:

A wide range of outdoor temperatures
Months of battery life
Low‑battery warnings before things get dicey
Emergency power from a USB power bank
Optional solar panel / extra battery
A hidden mechanical key backup

That combination means you’re not standing in the rain at midnight wondering why your fancy smart lock just turned into a very expensive doorknob.

Product Relevance: How a Palm Vein Smart Lock Addresses Modern Threats

Let’s tie this together by mapping common threats to how a palm vein smart lock—like the Lockin Veno—handles them.

1. Credential & Cloud Risk → Local Biometrics + App Control

Your palm vein data is processed right on the lock, not in some distant cloud.
If someone steals your app login, they can mess with access settings—but they still don’t have your palm vein, and they can’t just clone it onto another lock.

2. Biometric Spoofing → Venokey™ Palm Vein Recognition

It scans internal vein patterns, not external prints or flat images.
It’s fast (a fraction of a second), so you’re not tempted to fall back to weaker methods out of frustration.
It’s friendly to kids, seniors, long nails, wet or dirty hands, which means biometrics can be your default, not your backup.

3. Jamming & Signal Attacks → Fail-Secure + Anti-Interference Design

If wireless communication flakes out, the lock stays locked, not the other way around.
Hardware-level anti‑interference design keeps it behaving predictably in noisy environments.

4. Integration & Replay Attacks → Modern Protocols and Encryption

Integration with Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa, SmartThings means it has to hit certain security bars out of the gate.
Built‑in Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth with secure pairing make replaying old signals far less useful.

5. Reliability & Power Loss → Multiple Ways In (For You, Not Them)

You’re not relying on one single method:

Palm vein
App control
Emergency power via USB
Mechanical key backup

That’s what good security really is: layers, so one failure doesn’t mean you’re stuck outside—or wide open.

Actionable Tips: How to Make Any Smart Lock Much Safer

Even if you never buy a palm vein smart lock, these steps will make any smart lock setup a lot safer.

1. Start with Your Home Network

Your smart lock is only as secure as the Wi‑Fi it sits on.

Use WPA2 or WPA3 (not open networks, not the ancient WEP).
Change your router’s default admin password (yes, really).
If possible, create a separate guest network for visitors and IoT gadgets.
Keep your router’s firmware updated.

A sloppy network is like leaving your front door open and putting a fancy lock on the gate.

2. Harden Your Accounts

This is where most people get burned—and where you can easily get ahead.

Use a password manager to generate and store strong, unique passwords.
Turn on 2FA (ideally using an authenticator app instead of text messages).
Don’t share your main account; set up guest access or secondary users.
At least once in a while, review authorized devices and sign out old phones or tablets.

3. Configure the Lock Securely from Day One

Resist the urge to just tap “Next, Next, Done.”

Change any default PINs or codes immediately.
Be thoughtful about auto-unlock features that open the door when your phone is nearby; if it feels too magical, double-check how it actually verifies you.
Turn on notifications for things like unlock attempts, new user additions, and low battery.
Glance at the access log occasionally—especially if you share access with others.

With the Lockin Smart App, for example, you get a year of event alerts for free. That’s basically a built-in “activity feed” of your front door—use it.

4. Use Biometrics Wisely

Biometrics can be both super convenient and super secure—if you’re strategic.

Prefer biometrics that are harder to copy, like palm vein or high-quality 3D facial recognition.
Don’t enroll half the neighborhood; give others temporary codes or digital keys instead.
For sensitive areas (home office, gear room), consider biometric + PIN if your system allows it.

With a palm vein system like Veno’s, most households can confidently use biometrics as the primary way in, which means fewer shared codes floating around.

5. Maintain the Lock Like Any Other Appliance

Treat your smart lock like a mix between a door lock and a smartphone.

Install firmware and app updates when they’re available.
Once a year, check and lubricate the mechanical bits (according to the manual).
Test your backup key and emergency power method before you’re desperate.
Look at your door frame and strike plate—reinforce if necessary with longer screws or a beefier plate.

A top-tier smart lock on a flimsy door is like putting a safe on a cardboard box.

Are Smart Locks Really Safe from Hacking?

Here’s the honest answer:

They can be—if you choose the right one and set it up thoughtfully.

A well-designed smart lock:

Uses robust biometrics (ideally internal ones like palm vein recognition)
Keeps sensitive data on the device, not scattered around the cloud
Relies on modern encryption and secure standards (Matter, TLS, secure Bluetooth/Wi‑Fi)
Backs all that up with serious mechanical strength, weather resistance, and reliable power options

The Lockin Veno Palm Vein Recognition Smart Lock is a good example of this new class of smart lock: high-end biometrics at your fingertips (well, palm), privacy-first design, smart home integration, and real-world toughness in one package.

Conclusion & Call to Action: Make Your Smart Home Secure, Not Just Smart

There’s a common myth that you have to pick a side:

Either go “old-school safe” with a traditional deadbolt
Or go “modern and convenient” with a hackable smart lock

Reality check:

A basic lock can be picked, bumped, or copied faster than you think.
A poorly designed smart lock can absolutely be hacked or misconfigured.
A well‑chosen, properly set‑up smart lock can raise the bar on both convenience and security at the same time.

If you’re serious about your smart home security, here’s your game plan:

Figure out your real threats.
Are you more worried about random burglars, ex‑roommates with old keys, curious neighbors, or targeted attacks?
Upgrade with intention.
Look for strong biometrics (palm vein is a standout), solid physical ratings, local data storage, and clear security claims you can actually understand.
Treat your smart lock like a banking app.
Use strong passwords, 2FA, secure Wi‑Fi, and keep everything updated.

If you’re exploring options, add something like the Lockin Veno Palm Vein Recognition Smart Lock to your shortlist and use this article as your personal checklist. Ask the right questions. Compare how each lock handles biometrics, cloud use, and physical strength.

Your front door deserves to be at least as secure as your most important online account—just a whole lot easier to use.

Ready to level up your home?
Start by tightening your digital basics, then choose a smart lock that makes your home not just smart, but smart, secure, and unmistakably yours.