It's just as good in 2026 - 2d. Imagine Santa delivering his goods and hearing a mysterious UDP stream and wondering, "Is my supply chain being disrupted?", only to then realize that it was just the owners' TV spying on him after it was left on standby instead being completely turned off.
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.
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.
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 :-)
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.
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)
It's just as good in 2026 - 2d. Imagine Santa delivering his goods and hearing a mysterious UDP stream and wondering, "Is my supply chain being disrupted?", only to then realize that it was just the owners' TV spying on him after it was left on standby instead being completely turned off.
Author here, hi :^)
Hi! Do you happen to have that elevator music saved? I'm curious what it sounded like.
I had it saved, but it was 3-4 computers ago. I don't think I still have it, and if I did I wouldn't know where.
Aside from the article, I only found these scripts on my disk related to this project.
listen_2046.py and send_2046.py
https://gist.github.com/gkbrk/445929a854051203ee31afc7495c5a...
I'm curious now, did you develop the sending program at the same hotel, and if so, did it work?
(My guess is probably not, but you might DoS the other stream while you're sending your own.)
Thank you for writing one of my favorite blog posts of all time! I am curious: What is your favorite thing you’ve written?
Since you appear to be Turkish what's your favourite Turkish food that is poorly known outside of the country? Also don't miss https://subseacables.blogspot.com/2025/12/fully-diverse-100g...
"poorly known outside the country" rules out the main foods I like.
I love a good Kuymak [1] though, I think that's not too well known.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuymak
Nice, haven't tried that. Found a local cafe which looks very well run where it's a feature. On the list for next year! Happy New Year!
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.
Archive link as it seems the site is down: https://archive.is/afYvQ
Oops, picked a bad week to migrate from Cloudflare Pages to something custom in Rust.
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".
Yeah 99/100 times it’s gotta be mundane but wouldn’t it be interesting to spoof that traffic and play anything you wanted in the elevator?
"That would be wrong. You totally should not do that."
But yes, absolutely!
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.
I wish there was a whole book of just random compiled stories like this.
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 :-)
https://web.archive.org/web/20251230193736/https://www.gkbrk...
Good hotel room hacking entertainment is provided in-house, in this case.
Web server down? Can’t access.
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.
I was expecting to see a post bemoaning the lack of encryption on the elevator music...
omg this is so my vibe! I used to read corrupted database files for a living and it was soooo much fun.
Site is down, I think. :(