Knox Boxes Hacked

Money quote from the article:

"[Expert/Hacker] said he removed the core of a Knox Box lock with a socket wrench, pulled out the pins, replaced them, measured the grooves, then carved out a key with the file. He subsequently confirmed the key worked by testing it on a locked Knox Box in his own laboratory."

Secondly, background tutorial / risks of Knox Boxes.

Knox provides an option for a Tamper switch. I believe it will monitor both the door and if you rip the box off the wall. Also, the box should be mounted in a highly visible area that requires a short ladder to access. In this way, a bad guy will be more exposed if he should try and access the box. Finally, I would suggest that the flushmount version be used, making it extremely difficult to remove.

Tamper switch should activate when the Knox Box door is opened by any means, including with a key. If there is a true emergency at the building that requires opening the box, setting off the intrusion alarm shouldn't be a problem as police/emergency responders will already be aware that something is happening at the location.

Got it, so better hope the police respond fairly quickly if that tamper switch goes off by someone with a hacked great grandfather key?

Here locally, the Knox boxes are usually mounted 8 to 10 feet above floor level, a hacker here will need a ladder or a really tall accomplice. When I used to buy Knox boxes for fire applications, we generally ordered the ones with the tamper switch and connected it to a supervisory input on the fire alarm panel. Fire type alarms are higher priority at a remote monitoring station and generally treated more seriously than intrusion alarms by local authorities.

Years ago, when i was a service technician, i had to replace a lot of these due to malfunction or broken locks. Drilling them always worked for me..

All,

The Knox Box with alarm temper is connected to the burglar alarm and can either be an actual alarm point like a motion or a door contact, ect..., or can be a supervisory signal. The tamper works when the door is opened. It does not care if a key is used or the door is ripped off, or the lock is drilled. Once the door opens the box goes off. There is no requirement to have a knox box and a fire alarm panel. So many AHJ have a requirement to have a knox box on every facility built. However many AHJ only require a fire alamr system on a facility 6000 SF or greater. So the two don't always co-exist with each other.

The only purpose of a Knox Box is in te event of false fire alarm the fire does not have to break down a door to gain entry to check out a facility afte normal business hours. In the event a fire departement responds to a fire alarm or call of a fire and once there at the site there is visible smoke or flame, the fire department is not going to risk injury to a member of the fire crew to take the time to get out a ladder go up to the building on fire, looks for the box, place the ladder up against the building, remove the key or access card inside, climb down off the ladder and than go to the entry door and unlock it. Every fire department in the world has the master key already. Its called the fire ax, crow bar. If and when they need entry they will gain entry.