Privacy Digest

Medeco Readies Assembly-Line Fix for DefCon Lock Hack: "High-security lock manufacturer Medeco is countering a security attack uncovered at the Defcon hacking conference with design changes to safeguard its claim to 'bump proof' deadbolt locks.

High-security lock manufacturer Medeco says it's planning a design change to counter one of two attacks against its products that were described at the DefCon hacking conference over the weekend, boosting security on a line of locks found at the White House, the Pentagon, embassies and other critical locations.

On Sunday, three researchers led by lock-picking expert Marc Webber Tobias showed how they could easily "bump" and pick Biaxial and high-security M3 locks made by Medeco Security Locks, a Virginia-based company that claimed last year that its locks were "bump-proof."

The only tools the researchers needed to bump the Biaxial lock was a special bump key and a hammer. The M3 lock, which comes with an added slider feature, required an additional tool -- a paper clip.

Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania who has written about master-key locks, says the researchers' work is impressive and concerning.

"Medeco locks are marketed to people who want to use them for high-security applications," Blaze says. "They're widely trusted to be very, very secure and are regarded as effectively pick-proof in practice. So any time there is an attack against this kind of lock, particularly a non-destructive kind of attack (that doesn't show evidence of an attack), that's very surprising."

(Read Original Article - Via Wired News.)