A group of researchers has cracked the security features in what are supposed to be some of the world's most secure locks -- locks that are used at the White House, the Pentagon, embassies and other critical locations.
The researchers presented their findings for the first time at the DefCon hacker conference this weekend and showed how they could easily bump and pick the newest high-security M3 locks made by Medeco, a company that owns an estimated 70 percent of the lock market.
In addition to bumping and picking Medeco's M3 cylinder locks, the researchers also succeeded in the last few weeks to crack a Medeco M3 deadbolt lock -- considered to be one of the highest security locks in the world. They showed Wired News how to open the deadbolt in less than a minute using nothing more than a modified $2 screwdriver and a wire shim. They asked, however, that we not publish the details.
"Medeco invented the pin tumbler lock that lifts and twists the pins," says Marc Weber Tobias, one of the researchers and an investigative lawyer and author. "It's a brilliant idea and basically these are unpickable locks. But we can pick them. Everybody in my profession has been trying to break these for 30-35 years. And frankly, I can't believe that we've come up with this and nobody else has."