
519: The Password Is All Zeros
From Embedded by Logical Elegance
January 23, 2026 · 1h 7m · Episode 519
About this episode
Mark Omo and James Rowley discuss safecracking, security ethics, and relevant standards in technology.
Mark Omo and James Rowley spoke with us about safecracking, security, and the ethics of doing a bad job. Mark and James gave an excellent talk on the development of their safecracking tools at DEF CON 33: Cash, Drugs, and Guns: Why Your Safes Aren't Safe . It included a section of interaction involving the lock maker's lawyers bullying them and how the Electronic Frontier Foundation ( EFF ) has a Coders' Rights Project to support security research. As mentioned in the show, the US Cyber Trust Mark baseline has a very straightforward checklist; NISTIR 8259 is the overall standard, NISTIR 8259A is the technical checklist, NISTIR 8259B is the non-technical (process/maintenance) checklist. Roughly the process is NISTIR 8259 -> Plan/Guidance; NISTIR 8259A -> Build; NISTIR 8259B -> Support. We discussed ETSI EN 303 645 V3.1.3 (2024-09) Cyber Security for Consumer Internet of Things: Baseline Requirement and the EU's CRA: Cyber Resilience Act which requires manufacturers to implement security by design, have security by default, provide free security updates, and protect confidentiality. See more here: How to prepare for the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA): A guide for manufacturers . We…
People in this episode
Guests: Mark Omo, James Rowley
Topics covered
- safecracking
- security
- ethics
- Cyber Resilience Act
- NIST standards
- consumer IoT security
- reverse engineering
Keywords
- safecracking tools
- security research
- NISTIR
- Cyber Resilience Act
- consumer IoT
- reverse engineering
- DEF CON
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Electronic Frontier Foundation, NISTIR 8259, NISTIR 8259A, NISTIR 8259B, ETSI EN 303 645 V3.1.3, Cyber Resilience Act, fail0verflow
Products: Ghidra, PS4
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