Cracking safes with thermal imaging

(as a more viable alternative to mind reading)
Copyright (C) 2005 by Michal Zalewski (lcamtuf@coredump.cx)

In short, virtually all keypad entry systems - as used in various applications, including building access control, alarm system control, electronic lock safes, ATM input, etc - are susceptible to a trivial low-profile passphrase snooping scheme. This attack enables the attacker to quickly and unobtrusively recover previously entered passphrases with a high degree of success. This is in contrast to previously documented methods of keypad snooping; these methods were in general either highly intrusive - required close presence or installation of specialized hardware - or difficult to carry out and not very reliable (e.g., examining deposited fingerprints - works in low-use situations only, and does not reveal the ordering of digits).