![]() Although Tobias was able to open locks he'd brought with him, he was unable to bump open locks that Roberson pulled directly from the factory line. But Medeco's Roberson dismissed their claims after Tobias visited him last October to show him the technique. Tobias says that last year his group provided Medeco with full documentation of their techniques as well as video showing them cracking the locks. To demonstrate their bumping technique against Medeco's M3 lock for Wired News, Tobias took a lock and inserted one of the keys that he and his researchers designed from Medeco's codes, then hit it several times with a bump hammer and turned the key. A patented bar on the side of the key has to push in the slider in order for the key to enter. An improvement on the old Biaxial, the M3 cylinders feature a slider inside. The combination of the two, I think, is fairly unique and pretty clever."Įven then, the researcher's technique should have failed against Medeco's newest lock, the high-security M3 introduced in 2005. "If you're just looking at these things in mechanical terms or you're just looking at these things in computational terms, you won't be able to attack them successfully. "It's interesting to see how this combination of mechanical and computer analytical methods can be used to attack these things," he says. Using a computer, however, and taking advantage of engineering tolerances in the lock, the researchers crunched the codes and synthesized the combinations to create fewer than a dozen keys (they've asked us not to disclose the exact number) that will fit into numerous Medeco Biaxial and M3 locks. These angles and offsets can be combined in more than a million variations to create keys that are unique to each lock. Medeco's keys have a special feature in that the bidding on them (the peaks and valleys) is cut at different angles and different offsets (spacing). (Lock companies publish such codes so that locksmiths can create keys for the locks.) Using computers, they analyzed and crunched Medeco's published non-master-key codes to determine how many bump keys they would need to make to encompass all of the possible key-code combinations. Tobias and his colleagues began testing that claim a year ago last April through a combination of computational analysis and mechanical tests. When bumping received national media attention last year, the company even issued a press release boasting that its locks are "bump proof." The feature has made its Biaxial high-security locks a favorite for years with customers who sought extra protection. But Medeco's patented pin tumbler locks also require the key to rotate the pin to one of three orientations – left, right or center. In a conventional pin-tumbler lock, each cut in the user's key lifts the corresponding pin in the lock to the exact height needed to turn the cylinder. It's been widely believed that Medeco's high-security locks were impervious to the technique. We believe that this information is factually incorrect."Īlthough locksmiths and covert-entry specialists have known about and practiced bumping for years, the general public became aware of it only in the last two years after researchers disclosed the industry secret, and videos showing how to bump locks appeared on the internet. "We don't believe you can use a bump key on Biaxial or M3 (locks) at all, whether it's with a paper clip or not. ![]() "We stand behind our locks," Roberson said. He told Wired News he thinks the researchers' claims are untrue and Medeco locks are still bump proof. Medeco hopes to roll out the solution on its factory floor this Friday if tests show the solution works.īut Roberson is more skeptical about the bumping demonstration. This week the company rapidly developed what he hopes is a hardware solution to the vulnerability, and Roberson is scheduled to fly to Florida on Thursday to meet privately with one of Tobias' researchers to see their attack on the lock and try out the fix. "I don't want to create a panic, but this needs to get fixed."Ĭlyde Roberson, director of technical services at Medeco, acknowledged that the researchers might be right about the deadbolt problem. ![]() "The interface for deadbolts is defective," says Tobias, an investigative lawyer and the author. The researchers demonstrated this technique on Medeco's M3, though they say it works on some other brands of single-cylinder deadbolts they've tested. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |