Category Archives: lockpicking

Hacking When it Counts: Prison Locksmithing

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In 1978, Tim Jenkin was a man living on borrowed time, and he knew it. A white South African in his late 20s, he had been born into the apartheid system of brutally enforced racial segregation. By his own admission, he didn’t even realize in his youth that apartheid existed — it was just a part of his world. But while traveling abroad in the early 1970s he began to see the injustice of the South African political system, and spurred on by what he learned, he became an activist in the anti-apartheid underground.

Intent on righting the wrongs he …read more

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33C3: Breaking IoT Locks

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Fast-forward to the end of the talk, and you’ll hear someone in the audience ask [Ray] “Are there any Bluetooth locks that you can recommend?” and he gets to answer “nope, not really.” (If this counts as a spoiler for a talk about the security of three IoT locks at a hacker conference, you need to get out more.)

Unlocking a padlock with your cellphone isn’t as crazy as it sounds. The promise of Internet-enabled locks is that they can allow people one-time use or limited access to physical spaces, as easily as sending them an e-mail. Unfortunately, it also …read more

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The Terrible Security Of Bluetooth Locks

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Bluetooth devices are everywhere these days, and nothing compromises your opsec more than a bevy of smartphones, smart watches, fitbits, strange electronic conference badges, and other electronic ephemera we adorn ourselves with to make us better people, happier, and more productive members of society.

Bluetooth isn’t limited to wearables, either; deadbolts, garage door openers, and security systems are shipping with Bluetooth modules. Manufacturers of physical security paraphernalia are wont to add the Internet of Things label to their packaging, it seems. Although these devices should be designed with security in mind, most aren’t, making the state of Bluetooth smart locks …read more

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