The leading and most respected fire safe manufacturer in North America has designed one of its most popular containers with a fatal security flaw that can allow the three different versions to be opened in one second. But this story is as much about how their design engineers violated one of the simpler rules of security engineering as it is about what the company is going to do about it.
Last month I was in Vancouver, Canada in meetings with Terry Whin-Yates, one of Western Canada’s most famous and experienced locksmiths. He is known as Mr. Locksmith through his multiple locations in Vancouver and Calgary. He is flamboyant, clever, and comes from a long line of locksmiths in his family. The day before we arrived, he had gone to Costco and purchased a new fire safe (Model # SFW123FTC ) produced by SentrySafe. These safes are manufactured in Rochester, N.Y. SentrySafe is one the most recognized brands for protecting contents from fire and are sold at major office supply and hardware stores.
Terry broke open the 86-pound safe within a minute or two of setting it on his shop counter. It took my partner and me about a minute to figure out what Terry to replicate the safe-crack. We did it silently, instantly and without any evidence of entry. You don’t need any special skills to do it. All you need is a rare-earth magnet. Watch this video, which shows how we opened the safe.
Fire Safes and Burglary safes: the difference in design and security
To be fair, the SentrySafe is not meant to thwart burglars. It’s a fire safe meant to protect valuables and documents in the event of a fire. There is a fundamental difference between fire and burglary-rated safes which I would imagine most consumers do not fully understand. Burglarly safes are designed to prevent break-ins through the use of force or covert attacks, rather than compromise from fire, high temperatures, water, and dropping the container up to thirty feet (which could occur during a fire if the safe fell through a floor). There are very few containers that are rated for both burglary and fire. SentrySafe has a good reference guide that talks about this.
The problem is that the consumer sees an 86-pound container and it looks to be secure. It appears to be made of strong materials, it has a digital keypad to lock it, and it is called a safe. More importantly, the packaging for this particular safe has a padlock icon and the word security, which is an implied representation that it is in fact secure, at least to the unsophisticated buyer. That would include just about everyone that shops at locations such as Amazon, Sam’s, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Wal-Mart, Costco, Staples, OfficeMax, Target, and all of the other retailers in the Sentry distribution channel.
So what does the term “security” exactly mean in the context of a fire safe? In my view as a lawyer, it connotes an implied representation that the container has at least some level of security to protect the contents from attack, at least a couple minutes of delay to discourage a hurried burglar would be reasonably expected. But these safes can be opened in moments by a kid with a rare-earth magnet bought on the Internet. Sentry’s argument is that a burglar would have to know how to open the safe and have the requisite-strength magnet, but that begs the question: If there is no representation as to some level of security by Sentry, then why put a lock on the door?
Who is SentrySafe, and how did this happen?
Sentry is owned by Master Lock, a division of Fortune Brands Home & Security and a company that’s been around for eighty years. It still produces its containers in the U.S., a rarity these days because, as I have noted in previous articles about gun safes, most everything in the security sector is made in China (and most of it is junk and definitely not secure). Our lab repeatedly tests locks and safes that can be opened easily because of the lack of security expertise in most of the overseas facilities that produce products sold in this country.
We work with design engineers for some of the largest lock companies in the world. The story is always the same, and is often repeated: they learn how to make things work in school, but have little or no clue as to how to break them. This, in my view, is precisely the problem at Sentry. Its engineers were so focused on making the best fire safe that they forgot about the basic concepts of security-engineering and how easy it is to compromise the critical locking component in their safes: a solenoid.
Solenoids are simple coils with a ferrous pin that moves through the center of the coil to allow the bolt work to be locked or unlocked by the coil’s movement. Solenoids are used by a lot of different manufacturers and, unless they are implemented properly, allow containers to be easily opened with magnets, shock and vibration. Sentry designed its solenoid so that it could not be vibrated open, as we graphically demonstrated with Stack-On and Amsec containers. But it forgot about the concept of magnetism, which allows the little pin in the center of the solenoid to be activated from outside of the safe with a magnet, thus allowing the bolt work to be moved to an open state.
Two weeks ago, I contacted the quality control chief at Sentry, and since then have had several discussions with him about its design. On Tuesday I met with Kevin Angus and his lead engineer about the issue, and what they are going to do about it. His response was essentially that they screwed up, and will make it right with their customers. They are working on a way to fix it by sending out an upgrade kit. My analysis is that they will not be able to do that, and will end up replacing the current models with a different generation that deals with the fundamental design flaw that makes it so vulnerable.
Sentry issued the following statement to me for release in this article after our meeting:
In the four years this one line of SentrySafe electronic fire safe has been produced, the company has never received any report that any safe has ever been unlawfully compromised by any type of magnet. This particular line of electronic fire/water safe primarily offers consumers protection against fire and water and we offer a full range of other products with escalating levels of performance to meet consumers’ security needs.
Without locksmith training, knowledge of safe designs, experience handling and transporting dangerous rare-earth magnets, and the ability to locate this particular line of safe in a home or business, we believe it would be realistically very difficult, if not impossible for the average person to unlawfully access and manipulate this line of fire/water electronic safe.
Upon learning that this one product line could be vulnerable to manipulation by a locksmith using an industrial-strength rare-earth magnet, the company immediately tested its other electronic products. Based on our findings, we determined that no other SentrySafe line or product is vulnerable to this potential magnetic manipulation.
In addition, the company has taken a number of immediate steps that highlight our experience, industry-leadership and commitment to quality in order to quickly address this potential vulnerability:
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Our engineers are analyzing feasible design advancements that we can offer in future generations of this one line of electronic fire safe in order to improve resistance to potential magnetic manipulation.
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Our engineers are also analyzing the feasibility of developing a free, user-installed upgrade kit for existing affected electronic fire safes, which would improve the safe’s resistance to potential magnetic manipulation.
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This week we contacted consumers in writing who purchased this line of safe about this issue.
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We also posted this information prominently on the home page of sentrysafe.com. Consumers can visit our website and enter the serial number of their safe to determine if it’s one of the affected models. If it is one of the affected models, we offer next steps. Next steps include contacting our customer service team to put themselves on an upgrade kit waiting list or they may request a refund. Consumers who prefer to receive an upgrade kit will be mailed one when it is ready.
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To further reach consumers, we posted this information to our Twitter and Facebook profiles in order to drive them to this new section of sentrysafe.com.
While I think that Sentry has done exactly what a responsible corporation in the security business should and must do, its statement is misleading to the consumer in the mistaken belief that it takes a locksmith to open their containers. Far from it. Virtually anyone can open them, given the right magnet, and access to YouTube. Placement as we show on the video is not critical. But the important thing is that they are going to ultimately make it right.
I suggested a way to remedy the problem that would make these containers secure and meet the expectations of consumers. Whether they can or will do that remains to be seen. But like many other companies that have had similar serious design flaws, including Kryptonite with bike locks, Hewlett Packard and Targus with computer cable locks, Stack-On gun safes and countless others, Sentry immediately reacted to deal with the problem responsibly.
My advice to the consumer: ask a locksmith before you buy any fire or burglary safe. They usually know what is secure and what is not, at least in the consumer-level products, because they are called upon to open locks and containers all the time and learn the design deficiencies or defects that allow their compromise. But Sentry’s statement that it takes a locksmith to open their safes is simply wrong. What it takes is a kid with a magnet, and a smartphone or computer to watch our video, or the likely many others that will demonstrate how to open these and most probably many other containers. Sentry and other manufacturers may not believe they have security problems with their products, but our experience in analyzing hundreds of locks and safes would tell a very different story. We are just completing an analysis of many gun safes and have once again found many of them to be deficient or defective in design. Stay tuned.
