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High Security Handcuffs Opened With 3D-Printed and Laser-Cut Keys
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "In a workshop Friday at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York, a German hacker and security consultant who goes by the name 'Ray' showed that he could open high-security handcuffs from manufacturers Chubb and Bonowi with plastic copies of keys that he cheaply produced with a laser-cutter and a 3D printer. Both companies attempt to control the distribution of their keys to keep them exclusively in the hands of authorized buyers such as law enforcement. Lasercut plexiglass versions of the Chubb key, which opens handcuffs like the ones used in passenger airline restraints, were selling for $4 at the conference. Ray plans to post the CAD file for the key on the 3D printing site Thingiverse after LockCon later this week."
Mcgyver used a bar of soap and a file to copy keys. Color me unimpressed.
Now lets say this type of key creation is outlawed. .
Create handcuff keys
Be put in handcuffs
Use Key. Escape
It will be like bribing Law enforcement with counterfeit cash
. .
It has nothing to do with mass production. The reason is so that any officer can open any other officer's cuffs and time is lot lost trying to find the arresting officer and sorting out who owns which cuffs..
...It's not like these things are impossible to get out of if you know what you are doing...
That would be the rub. They are quite hard to defeat compared to normal cuffs. Having an interest in the lockpicking community I can say hardly the top 5% of them could get out of these with improvised tools. Making a tool out of scrap bits of plastic makes them easy for anyone to get out of.
Anything a laser-cutter or 3D printer can do so can a human, especially locksmiths with an eye for detail. The skills are not dissimilar to watchmakers before precision machine tools. These new methods makes anyone of no skill and no talent be able to do what only highly trained, highly practiced people can do. That is a security threat.
There have been commercially available disguised handcuff keys for a long time.
This one isn't terrible, but not the best I have seen either.
http://theawesomer.com/bracelet-with-handcuff-key/144904/
Note: The people most likely to want to get away after being apprehended are both guilty AND repeat offenders. The second factor being a group that might have the foresight to wear such a thing.
Ouch
Handcuffs are just a quick and easy way of ensuring someone can't cause too much trouble. When your hands are held behind your back, you can't make much mischief in general. They aren't intended to be something to hold someone securely for long periods. Just to temporarily restrain someone for transport.
As such it isn't like the keying system has to be top notch. It is far more important that they are easy to unlock than that they are ultra-secure.
For that matter at times the police will just use what are more or less large zip-ties. Plastic flexi-cuffs are easy and cheap to use in a riot situation. They aren't very secure, they can be easily cut off and indeed that is what the police themselves do, but you can cheaply have a bunch of them if needed.
it is pretty difficult to unlock the handcuffs even you if had and could reach the key
Difficult is not impossible and with enough practice difficult becomes easy.
Keys can be in the mouth, swallowed, in a seam, in a concealed compartment in a belt loop, etc. There are many places to carry a key that will get by most searches. There was one instance where a man has a pouch surgically installed in his cheek just big enough to hold a handcuff key. Many "escape artists" conceal keys on their person for their acts and these keys are not found by the spectators, sometimes police officers, who search them.
So no, an accomplice is not necessary.
It isn't about having a 3D printer handy after you are cuffed. It is about challenging the idea of physical security through obscurity. Handcuffs rely on a "shared secret" of the physical key, that's why the manufacturers go to great lengths to control distribution of those keys. But 3D printers make it practical to turn that physical key into data, and at that point all of the problems of security through obscurity of information start to apply to a formerly physical security model.
In other words, all it takes is for one person to "scan" a key and upload it to the internet and now it is orders of magnitude more likely that someone will have a copy of the key on their person, perhaps disguised as jewlery or just in stuck in their pockets, that will let themselves unlock their cuffs while sitting in the back of a police car.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Ah, but what if i'm carrying plastic keys AND a loaded D20? What will you do then?