German SSDeV member Ray is known all around the world for his impressive collection of handcuffs and his fun ways of opening most of them. On top of that he gives great presentations and always manages to add a lot of humor into them!
At HAR he pulled another stunt: He used a 3D printer to print handcuff keys. And not just any ordinary handcuff key … no, it’s the official handcuff key from the Dutch police! At first the police officers at HAR were a little reluctant to event try out the plastic key he printed. But he found another way to verify the key he printed was the correct one. I guess these officers never thought about wearing keys concealed, especially when talking with Mr. Handcuff himself. Given the megapixel camera’s on the market today it was not so difficult to verify the key he printed was the correct one.
At the end of the day he talked the officers into trying the key on their handcuffs and … it did work! At least the Dutch Police now knows there is a plastic key on the market that will open their handcuffs. A plastic key undetectable by metal detectors….
And Ray made it easy for you. For those of you wanting to print your own Dutch police handcuff key … the STL file is available online at http://ke.y.nu/
The New York Times just came out with an article on European lockpickers, quoting a Dutch Police officer who was not too negative about the lockpick scene. Lets hope they still feel this way after this post …
*Warning* Before you print out your keys please check your local law! Reading the article below (pdf mirror) should be a fair warning! In some places it is not quite healthy to run around wearing police handcuffs ….
For wearing handcuff keys on a necklace draped around his neck, a homeless Miami Beach man could face years in prison.
Prosecutors on Tuesday formally charged Michael Gonzalez, 22, with disorderly intoxication, marijuana possession and two counts of possession of a concealed handcuff key — a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
“It’s an actual felony,” prosecutor Barbara Teresa Govea explained to Miami-Dade Circuit Judge John Thornton, who questioned the charge.
“There’s got to be some kind of constitutional violation in there somewhere,” Assistant Public Defender Michelle Prescott grumbled to the court.
Actually, the Florida Legislature passed the law after the 1998 murders of two Tampa deputies and a state trooper. Hank Earl Carr shot and killed them after he escaped his cuffs using a universal handcuff key hidden on a necklace.
Gonzalez was arrested Aug. 16 after Miami Beach police said he was harassing women on the South Beach sand. In a report, Officer Errol Vidal wrote that he found a small amount of marijuana in the man’s pocket and “two handcuff keys concealed under his shirt on a necklace.”
Also under Gonzalez’s shirt: a tattoo on his right shoulder, with the word “anarchy” and shooting flames.
I have been looking forward to the HAR conference for a long time. After all, it was going to be the moment to publicly talk about our discovery on bypassing the electronic locking part on the first generation Mul-T-Lock Cliq. More then one year ago we discovered the samples we had in some instances could be opened with the so called ‘magnetic ring’ (you still needed to have the correct mechanical key or bypass the mechanical part). An important discovery as the attack would not show up in the electronic logfile in the lock. And the integrity of the logfile is a key issue in these kind of systems. So we immediately informed Mul-T-Lock about this problem. And even though communication did not always go smooth we came to an agreement. We agreed to go into full detail about this at the HAR conference in 2009. And that is what we just did. At the presentation we showed the problem was not magnetism … it was vibration!
In the meantime Mul-T-Lock came out with a new version and we even received some samples to test. How successful the fix was still has to be determined. And communication is still slow. Marc Tobias and Tobias Bluzmanis claimed at DefCon to be able to still open the latest generation Mul-T-Lock Cliq locks (and a wide range of other electronic and electromechanical locks). They briefed us behind closed doors and I can only say their claims look solid (as was to be expected from these clever and high-profile security experts!).
At the HAR presentation we also demonstrated attacks on electronic locks that make use of the basic Dallas Ibutton key. This key is nothing more then a device that spits out a 64 bit number. If the number is on the list of the lock it will open. I read somewhere 175 million of these keys are in use. We found it is not difficult to duplicate these keys.
What is more interesting is that we found a way to scan for keys on some of these locks. Scanning a 64 bit key can take forever (at approximately one key per second!). However … we discovered sometimes these keys are handed out in batches with numbers following up or in close range of each other. In those cases it might be possible to scan for numbers in a known range.
To see the entire presentation you need to go to: www.rehash.nl , select ‘HAR2009′ and enter ‘lockpicking’. Unfortunately there is no deeplink to our presentation yet….
Presenting these hacks was nice, but more important to me we also tried to address a more serious topic. That of disclosure and dealing with lock manufacturers.
I like to keep things simple. If we discover a vulnerability in a lock we will notify the manufacturer. We will tell them what we know and most of the time an interesting and technical discussion is started. And sometimes the manufacturer is a little reluctant and barely wants (or dares) to communicate. Especially in the US the stakes can be high for them because of the ‘I will sue you’ culture. So in a way we understand both approaches and are fine with them, as long as it is clear we will go public on the vulnerability at one moment in time. In general we are talking giving them three to six months, although a longer period can be negotiated if that time is needed to update specific projects or customers.
The philosophy behind this is approach is to give the manufacturer some time to fix the problem, inform it’s customers, exchange locks or prepare a press statement. The fact they know a publication is coming should be enough to motivate them to do the right thing. Going public on the vulnerability will send out a clear signal: better make good locks! There are motivated people out there paying attention to what you do and who will write about it if weak spots are discovered.
So far so good ….
What we have seen lately is that lock manufacturers (try to) fix problems but no longer openly want to discuss their fixes. It could be because of this ‘I sue you culture’, but it also creates a lot of ‘security trough obscurity’. And to me that is a sign of weakness. After all, how can we evaluate the ‘new and improved’ product if the manufacturer is reluctant to release information on how they (supposedly?) fixed a problem? The ‘just trust us, we know what we are doing’ approach is not something that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling … at all.
By not saying anything about the fix the researchers are delayed. Or if they have a limited number of locks to test they might even miss an important new feature that is incorporated in some of the new locks. But at the end of the day the information leaks out or is distilled from a greater pool of locks. And since the researchers are highly motivated, the product will fall anyway. Only by it taking a little longer to fall, more locks are sold and more locks are affected when it happens.
Interestingly enough it now seems some security researchers are going the same route as the lock manufacturers. They claim specific locks can be bypassed but refuse to tell the manufacturer how they did it. Only if the manufacturer promises to exchange all the locks in the field (free of charge) they are willing to explain how the technique works. The idea behind this is they are trying to do the end customer a favor. After all, nobody knows how to bypass the customers lock and the manufacturer has to change it free of charge before anyone else hears about it. Logically the lock manufacturer will first try to find the problem itself, but now learns what it feels like to be kept in the dark. Even if they find a vulnerability they can never be sure it is the same one the researchers found. So a fix created does not necessarily means it actually works against the unknown attack…. or if the fix introduces an even bigger problem! And instead of being happy, the end customer is getting nervous. What if someone else finds out about the problem?
There may well be a few extreme cases where putting lots of pressure on some manufacturer is justified because they are really screwing over the public interest. But in general we feel everyone benefits if we try to keep as much information available to as many parties as possible, as quickly as possible. That way, consumers can make informed choices, manufacturers still make their own judgments (and face public scrutiny on them) and manufacturers and enthusiasts can continue to learn from eachother.
Let us try to keep the research area open and transparent and all learn from these discoveries…..
If there is one thing I have learned in life it is that you have to make investments to get anywhere. Whether it is time and practice to get good at lockpicking, or investing time and money to fly to international events like Aloa and other places, at the end it always pays off. Maybe not always in hard cash, but most of the time you make new friends and learn new techniques this way.
It seems more people understand you have to invest time and money. When ever we organize an event like LockCon or the Dutch Open, we receive lots of requests from people that want to participate. And normally we have to disappoint quite some people as there just is not enough room and staff to keep control.
This year is different as there will be no LockCon in Sneek. Instead of organizing our annual ‘semi-closed’ event, this year all our energy will be put in a ‘fully open’ lockpick village (LockCon village?) at the HAR2009 event (August 13-16 in Vierhouten, NL). This is where the ‘Dutch Open’ lockpick games will take place. The name ‘Dutch Open’ can be a little misleading as they are in fact the most international lockpick games on the planet. And at HAR we hope to get participants from all over the globe to battle for the title in the lockpick championships, impressioning games and a safe-combination lock manipulation contest. And it is your chance to participate in the games or see the action in real life!
Needless to say there will be lock-related presentations. For instance, Jord Knaap, Han and I will be giving a presentation called: “bypassing electronic and electro mechanical locks”. And we will try hard to get more lock related presentations at HAR. Currently there is a ‘call for papers’, so if you want to present something submit there asap.
To run a high quality lockpick village is a serious task. Besides the many championships there will be a sportshop and ’round the clock’ workshops and sessions. These workshops range from the very basics to highly advanced. And we could not do all this without the help of our German friends of SSDeV. They traditionally have a big influence on the village as they supply many of the hard working staff and bring a big part of the hardware/sport shop. But hopefully this time we will get some support from Toool.US (special HAR2009 pickset?) and maybe from other locksport organizations (drop me a mail if you want to help/participate).
If you are into locks and lockpicking, HAR2009 is the place to be!
I know HAR is still ‘far away’, but I do urge you to buy your ticket(s) now! The HAR organization needs your money, and ordering a ticket before February 29th saves you 100 euro!
ACT NOW!
And we like to invest a little too. Toool will sponsor the first twenty-five people that buy a ticket using the word ‘freepicks’ at the coupon code field with an original ‘last hope credit card pickset’ (and 5 euro additional discount)!
