MASTER KEY FOR MASTER LOCKS HOW TO

Get your copy now, in case they disappear. It’s the third photo on this page, reproduced here. If you want to at least know your luggage has been tampered with, forget the TSA lock and use a zip-tie or tamper-evident seal instead, or attach a real lock and force the TSA to use their bolt cutters. So the TSA backdoor has failed: we must assume any adversary can open any TSA “lock”.

So by simply including a pretty picture of the complete spread of TSA keys in the Washington Post’s paean to the TSA, the Washington Post enabled anyone to make their own TSA keys.

MASTER KEY FOR MASTER LOCKS HOW TO

All it takes to duplicate a physical key is a photograph, since it is the pattern of the teeth, not the key itself, that tells you how to open the lock. Unfortunately for everyone, a TSA agent and the Washington Post revealed the secret. All others, notably baggage handlers and hotel staff, should be unable to surreptitiously open these locks. In theory, only the Transportation Security Agency or other screeners should be able to open a TSA lock using one of their master keys. TSA “Travel Sentry” luggage locks contain a disclosed backdoor which is similar in spirit to what Director Comey desires for encrypted phones. The whole thing neatly illustrates one of the main problems with backdoors, whether in cryptographic systems or physical systems: they’re fragile.

It’s now blurred out of the Washington Post story, but the image is still floating around the Internet. Someone recently noticed a Washington Post story on the TSA that originally contained a detailed photograph of all the TSA master keys.

Master key for master locks