Movie safe heists made a reality
Print Edition
Hollywood-style heists have took on real-world potential as hackers at a Def Con gathering showed how to crack safes in full view of security cameras without ever being seen.
Independent computer researchers Eric Van Albert and Zach Banks found a way to pull off the movie-script ploy of intercepting surveillance camera streams and then looping back video of nothing amiss while, ostensibly, safes or vaults are being emptied.
“We set out to create our own device as close to the movies as possible,” Van Albert said as the pair demonstrated their work to an overflow crowd on Saturday.
“To see how possible this kind of attack actually is,” he added.
They spent about US$500 to build a device they could splice into an ethernet cable carrying imagery from surveillance cameras to screens being watched by guards.
The creation, a box of electronics, re-routes incoming video feeds to their computer, where software tends to the job of creating harmless looking footage that is then fed to guards to mask a heist.
As in films, a team planning a theft would need to get access to the cable handling surveillance video. After that, a video signal intercept could be controlled from a far off location, according to the hackers.
Once a safe or vault was emptied and the team is safely away, the device could be removed with a victim being none-the-wiser.
The looping video hack came just hours after researchers for security firm Bishop Fox showed how to hack open a smart safe made by Brinks using a computer thumb drive.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
