Just when we thought that hackers freeing prisoners only happened in the movies, at the recent DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas, researchers revealed that it is possible for hackers to help prisoners escape from prison. They realized this was possible due to an accident that happened a few years ago, which caused all the prison doors in an unnamed prison to open due to a random power surge.
Researchers believe that if there was a way to replicate the power surge, the doors could be unlocked again. While they haven’t put the theory to the test on a real prison, they believe it is possible because prison guards don’t take basic cyber security measures. During a US prison tour, a researcher even noticed a prison guard checking his email using the same computer that communicates with the system operating the doors.
Imagine if a guard gets tricked by a hacker into running some malware on the computer? It looks like the country’s correctional facilities need a course in cyber security to ensure such things don’t happen in the future. Though one could argue, there’s still the outer security to bypass if a prisoner were to escape jail.