For several years, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) designed some patterns of locks and padlocks for the manufacturers of luggage the use in their products, this so that the agency could have access to suspicious luggage without breaking locks or padlocks and so avoid inconvenience to passengers.
In theory only the TSA can open these locks by eight master keys, keys that surfaced on the Internet a year ago and that over time showed that many were not working properly, especially because they were based on a photograph; but now they have managed to crack the TSA locks so that together with the images were, the keys can be printed in 3D.
Image Source: Google Image
A security breach seems not to matter to the TSA
The designs of these keys first appeared in a photograph in a report in the Washington Post last year, with this security experts created planes and rose to internet for anyone’s could print in 3D, but here missing number 8 key, in addition to the operation of the seven keys did not work as expected.
Now, the same security group has released an update to the seven keys and wrench flats 8, as they explained during the recent hacker conference HOPE, have deciphered the details of the keys that are manufactured by a company ” independent “called safe Skies, which in turn depends travel Sentry, a company known for making devices and security locks, which are used in a wide variety of bags and travel luggage.
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This group of hackers explained that to access the key design 8 had to decipher the function and design of the locks using exclusively Travel Sentry, where they were given the task of analyzing the seven keys to find the common denominator, with what they were able to find the pattern that breaks the physical security encryption.
“This is a great metaphor for how weak are the security mechanisms and how easy it is to break them.”
The intention to make known the plans of the keys, which can now be found on GitHub so that anyone can print in 3D, is not to scare people, but to expose how fragile it is to our security in the hands of a institution , that no matter what we are facing physical or digital security because there will always be someone able to break it .
Most worrying of all is that the TSA does not seem to mind this new security breach, as mentioned that the publication of these planes does not pose a risk to aviation security, only it comes to consumer products that are not part the security regime TSA.