[NetBehaviour] Researchers Crack Medeco High-Security Locks With Plastic Keys.

[marc garrett]

Researchers Crack Medeco High-Security Locks With Plastic Keys.

By Kim Zetter

According to a group of security researchers speaking at the DefCon 
hacker conference Friday in Las Vegas, Medeco high-security locks take 
Visa, too. As well as MasterCard, American Express and Discover cards.

To be more precise, the researchers say that plastic used in all of 
these credit cards can be easily fashioned into simulated keys that open 
three kinds of M3 high-security locks made by the Virginia-based Medeco 
Security Locks company -- locks that are used to secure sensitive 
facilities in places such as the White House, the Pentagon, embassies 
and other buildings.

"Virtually all conventional pin-tumbler locks are vulnerable to this 
method of attack, and frankly nobody has really considered it or looked 
at it before," says Marc Weber Tobias, one of the researchers.

The researchers showed Threat Level how they could create the simulated 
keys from plastic simply by scanning or photographing a Medeco key, 
printing the image onto a label and placing the label onto a credit card 
or other plastic to cut out the key with an X-Acto blade or scissors and 
then use the key to open a lock covertly.

Any credit card plastic will do to create a simulated key, as will 
Shrinky Dinks plastic, which comes in sheets that can be run through a 
printer. For the digital picture of the original key to work, the image 
has to be to scale.

http://tinyurl.com/59ynq6