Security specialists on Sunday showed that cracking top-rated locks said to secure the US Pentagon and Britain’s royal family is child’s play.
Marc Tobias was in a sea of hackers practicing lock picking at a DefCon gathering in Las Vegas when he easily opened Medeco’s flagship lock with a paper clip and a key cut from plastic sheets in a Shrinky Dinks toy.
“We think this is a pretty serious threat, and the government guys here we’ve been talking to agree,” Tobias said.
US federal police and defense department officials routinely attend the notorious DefCon hackers gathering in Las Vegas to assess new computer threats and recruit talent to the government’s cyber security teams.
Lock picking is an appealing hobby among DefCon hackers, with a suite dedicated to tutoring, practice and competitions.
Tobias was in a packed “Lock Pick Village” when he detailed how simple it is to open Medeco locks trusted to protect fortunes, national secrets and more.
Tobias has authored books on lock picking and shown how even children can “bump” some high-security Medeco models open by essentially shoving shims in key holes and whacking them.
This newly uncovered crack is said to be troublesome because it involves copying keys.
“If you can make a key it’s over,” Tobias said. “Forget about picking and all that other stuff. There is nothing abstract about making a plastic key for a lock that isn’t yours.”
The trick to making plastic copies of keys is to get hold of a picture or photocopy of an original. One basically uses pictures as templates and cuts out plastic versions of keys.
Meanwhile, a US district judge in Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order to stop three Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students from doing a presentation at DefCon showing the security flaws in Boston subway’s automated fare system.
The Electronics Frontier Foundation, which is representing MIT students Zack Anderson, Alessandro Chiesa and RJ Ryan, plans to fight the order, the group’s civil liberties director said.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority said in a complaint filed on Friday that the students offered to show others how to use the hacks before giving the transit system a chance to fix the flaws.
But Granick said the students were simply trying to share their research and planned to omit key information on making it easy to hack into the payment system.
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) purge of his most senior general is driven by his effort to both secure “total control” of his military and root out corruption, US Ambassador to China David Perdue said told Bloomberg Television yesterday. The probe into Zhang Youxia (張又俠), Xi’s second-in-command, announced over the weekend, is a “major development,” Perdue said, citing the family connections the vice chair of China’s apex military commission has with Xi. Chinese authorities said Zhang was being investigated for suspected serious discipline and law violations, without disclosing further details. “I take him at his word that there’s a corruption effort under
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
RSS