DEFCON 19: Introduction to Tamper Evident Devices
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN points to it in threads about physical security and tamper-evident seals as an informative look at how easily they are bypassed.
What it is
A DEF CON 19 talk by datagram introducing tamper-evident devices. It reviews how seals and similar products are designed and shows that they are often easily defeated, drawing on the DEF CON tamper-evident contest.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2015 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends sllabres · 2015-09 · on “TSA Master Keys”
unfortunately several of these professional seals are only a bit more obscure, but not much harder to open than a zip tie. Introduction to Tamper Evident Devices from datagram at defcon 19 [this video] is interesting to watch
Cites capableweb · 2022-06 · on “Detecting unauthorized physical access with beans, lentils and colored rice (2021)”
> A company makes security seals for this very purpose and markets them under the name "TamperTell". They have a serial number on them and a matching receipt tab that you remove before flight then check against on arrival. I wouldn't put too much trust into the marketing of products like this. Time and time again they fail to protect against the most basic of "lockpicking", and unless I've seen multiple skilled people failing at unlocking the "TamperTell", I'd put it in the same bucket as the rest. > DEF CON 18 (2010) held the first ever "Tamper Evident" contest, where contestants were given a box sealed with a variety of tamper evident devices, many of which purport to be "tamper proof." Al
Cites OmarAssadi · 2023-10 · on “How to mitigate the Hetzner/Linode XMPP.ru MitM interception incident”
Assuming this was done at the government's request, I assume Hetzner is more than willing to comply with a court order mandating they allow them to monitor and physically size a machine. And outside of nation-state requests, even ignoring the fact that someone could probably pay-off an employee, I think ease would depend a lot on the datacenter and target; judging by the awesome and hilarious story behind the Fremont Cabal accidentally becoming an internet exchange by essentially having some dude barely secretly slipping unauthorized cables into the raceways [1], I figure there are a lot of places where if your target is simply renting a couple rack units or single rack rather than an entire