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Safecracking for the Computer Scientist

Posted by michael on from the alternate-lines-of-work dept.

secureman writes "It looks like Matt Blaze (the University of Pennsylvania CS professor best known for finding security flaws in the NSA Clipper Chip and in master keyed locks) is still causing trouble in physical security circles. There's a draft paper (dated December '04) on his web site entitled Safecracking for the Computer Scientist, which is a pretty in-depth look at what computer security can learn from safes (and vaults). The interesting thing is that it describes in detail the different ways that safes are cracked, probably revealing techniques that locksmiths would rather you didn't know about (there's a lot of security-by-obscurity there). The conclusion seems to be that while safes can fail, at least they do so in better ways than computer systems do. Warning: it's a 2.5 meg pdf file with lots of pretty pictures."

4 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Surely you're joking... by DamonHD · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Mr Feynman used to be well known for this sort of things, repeatedly cracking the Los Alamos safes to try to demonstrate how lax security was...

    --
    http://m.earth.org.uk/
  2. Considering the audience... by pmike_bauer · · Score: 0, Redundant

    ...is posting safe-cracking techniques on /. responsible behaviour?

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    I read /. for the (Score:-1, Conservative) comments.
    1. Re:Considering the audience... by bladesjester · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Like those of us who actually wanted to know couldn't find the info on our own? Techniques for safe cracking, lock picking, etc are pretty well documented.

      --
      Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
  3. Re:The shocking secret the industry wants covered by crazyeddie740 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Damn, now I have to change my combination!