"World's Smallest Combination Lock" Promises To Foil The Best Computer Hacker, Say Sandia Developers

"Computer firewalls have always been dependent on software, which means they are 'soft' and subject to manipulations," says Larry Dalton, manager of Sandia's High Integrity Software Systems Engineering Department. "Our device is hardware and is extremely difficult to break into. You have one and only one chance in a million of picking exactly the right code compared to a one in 10,000 chance, with many additional chances, in most software firewalls. After one failed try, this new device mechanically shuts down and can't be reset and reopened except by the owner."

Patent filed

Sandia, a Department of Energy (DOE) national security lab, recently filed for a patent for the mechanism. The first working units were fabricated in July. The Sandia team, which is refining the device and doing reliability tests, expects to have it ready for commercialization in about two years. Once it is perfected, a commercial partner will be tapped to produce and sell it. "The Recodable Locking Device should be of great interest to businesses and individuals who have computer networks, have sites on the Web, or require secure computers," says Frank Peter, engineer who designed the device. "It would make it virtually impossible for break-ins to Web sites, like what occurred with The New York Times in September." (Hackers broke into the Times' electronic edition in mid-September and shut it down for several hours.)

Computer crime is a growing problem nationwide. The Computer Security Institute together with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently surveyed 520 security practitioners in US corporations, government agencies, financial institutions, and universities. Results showed that 64 percent of the respondents reported computer security breaches within the last 12 months. And although 72 percent said they suffered financial losses from these breaches, only 42 percent were able to quantify their losses -- estimating them to be more than $136.8 million.

Dalton says he 'had the notion' of the device for three years, calling it the 'digital isolation and incompatibility' project. Digital was for the digital world, and isolation and incompatibility are important concepts in stronglinks, which are mechanical locks used as safety devices in weapons. He turned to Sandia's Electromechanical Engineering Department, headed by David Plummer, to do the design because of that group's expertise in stronglinks as well as its ability to design using the new MEMS technology.

Simple system

"It took about three months to go from concept to the final design," Peter says. "Based on a code storage scheme used successfully in existing weapon surety subsystems, we were able to design a very simple device -- and it's the simplicity of the device that makes it easy to analyze from a vulnerability standpoint."

The Sandia Microelectronics Development Laboratory used Peter's design to build a working device, which consists of a series of six code wheels, each less than 300 microns in diameter, driven by electrostatic comb drives that turn electrical impulses into mechanical motion. The 'lock owner' sets a lock combination to any value from one to one million. The entire device is about 9.4 millimeters by 4.7 millimeters, about the size of a button on a dress shirt. The Recodable Locking Device consists of two sides -- the user side and the secure side. To unlock the device, a user must enter a code that identically matches the code stored mechanically in the six code wheels. If the user makes even one wrong entry -- and close doesn't count -- the device mechanically 'locks up' and does not allow any further tries until the owner resets it from the secure side.

The six gears and the comb drives would be put on a small chip that could be incorporated into any computer, computer network, or security system. Because the chip is built using integrated circuit fabricating techniques, hundreds can be constructed on a single six-inch silicon wafer. The end result is that the device will be very inexpensive to produce.

Plummer says Sandia is the only place where development of such a mechanism could have occurred. "That's due to the unique multilevel polysilicon fabrication process developed by Sandia and our heritage of designing mechanical locking devices," he says. Besides being a deterrent to hackers, the device has other security applications, Peter says. For example, controlled information could be made available only in a window of opportunity. The information owner could tell the party needing the data that he or she has five minutes to enter in a specific code and gain access. Then, after five minutes, the code would be reset and access denied.

A variety of potential safety applications are also possible with the Recodable Locking Device. The mechanism can confirm that a critical system is operating as expected. And if it detects a problem, it will not permit execution of a function. In this safety capacity, the device could be used, for example, to ensure that a radiation therapy machine delivers the correct radiation dosage. "This device has a powerful potential -- one that is readily understood by most everyone," Dalton says. "I've been told by Department of Defense people that this is the first real technical advancement in information security that they've seen in a long time."

Sandia is a multiprogram DOE laboratory, operated by a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corp. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major research and development responsibilities in national security, energy, and environmental technologies and economic competitiveness.