DefCon Chronicles: open any lock under 5 seconds

Bump opening a lockMarc Weber Tobias and Matt Fiddler are talking about bump-opening most of the locks out there in the United States. The full paper is availavle at security.org. They also conducted a research with USPS and Mailboxes, etc. While USPS quickly worked with the researchers and agreed that the issue was there, MailBoxes, etc. keeps denying there’s a problem. A PDF with detailed technical analysis is also available. The presentation promised:

Case examples and demonstrations detailing a major security flaw and vulnerability in locks used by the federal government and a private sector corporation that affect millions of users will be presented.

and it certainly delivered that. Live in an apartment complex? you can make a bump key out of your key that will open any apartment. Rent a mail box? Gain access to anything that uses the same type of key. And if you’re bothered too much with creating your own bump keys, just buy some off eBay.

Posted Saturday, August 5th, 2006 under DefCon.

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