Thursday, 23. January 2003
Topic: - on January 23, 2003 at 7:11:24 PM CET
Trial and error reveals master keys
Pin-and-tumbler locks only open when a key has elevated all the pins inside the mechanism to their correct positions. A normal lock with five pins can have around a million different pin configurations.
However, locks for which there is a master key have two sets of correct pin positions. The first is unique to each individual lock; the second works with the master key and is the same for every lock.
In a paper submitted to the journal IEEE Security and Privacy, Blaze shows that it is possible to work out the master key positions in a relatively short amount on time using trial and error.
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