Hello all,
this is my first posting here, despite I am already a quite reader for some time. Thanks for this great community
I have a question regarding the security of the NFC tags.
My plan is to install an NFC tag to the outside of my garage door triggering the garage door to open.
This tag can be scanned by any person who walks to my ground.
How secure is this tag scanning? If anybody has installed the HA app installed, does he have a chance to trigger this action? Or does he need the access to the HA account?
Is it maybe possible to couple this NFC action to specific pre-defined mobile phones?
The content of the NFC tag is just some random string with instructions that will open the Home Assistant app. When your phone reads it, the Home Assistant app gets activated and it triggers an event inside Home Assistant with that random string.
You obviously need to be logged in to your instance for that to work, everyone else will just read random garbage.
Hello fedot,
thanks for your reply.
That is exactly what I was expecting but the NFC documentation for NFC irritated me a bit cause it says:
From the apps you can now write a special Home Assistant URL to tags. Once you hover over one of these tags with your phone, they will trigger the Home Assistant app and send the identifier to your Home Assistant instance for processing. Tags are not bound to the phone that wrote them, any phone can scan them.
For me this sounds like the Tag contains an URL and if this is read it can be opened by any phone which will trigger the event.
Yes, the URL makes sense. But again, you have to be authenticated to trigger the event! Also, as I said, you need to write automations for the tags, else nothing will happen. So you can easily check if the device_id is one which is allowed to execute the automation.