Fool the TSA’s Scanners with Pancakes [Security]

Since current airport security technology is basically reactive to known threats, competent evil doers will eventually change their tactics to skirt by and do their worst. With that in mind, a new tactic could possibly be pancakes.

Not pancakes you’d necessarily eat, in fact, but PETN pancakes. Potential attackers would take the notoriously explosive material and smooth it into a pancake shape to mimic the contours of the abdomen using dimensions of about about 15-20cm in diameter and 1cm thick. Voila, hidden explosive.

This, consistent with a report inside the Journal of Transportation Security (emphasis mine):

It is extremely likely that an enormous (15-20 cm in diameter), irregularly-shaped, cm-thick pancake with beveled edges, taped to the abdomen, could be invisible to this technology, ironically, due to its large volume, since it really is easily confused with normal anatomy. Thus, a third of a kilo of PETN, easily picked up in a competent pat down, could be missed by backscatter ” high technology” . Forty grams of PETN, a purportedly dangerous amount, would fit in a 1.25 mm-thick pancake of the size simulated here and be virtually invisible. Packed in a compact mode, say, a 1 cm×4 cm×5 cm brick, it’d be detected.

Where an effortless pat down would effectively mitigate this threat (Cost: TSA worker’s salary), the multi-million dollar nudie machines would do nothing.

Oh, and conspicuous wires and thin blades? Potentially invisible in addition:

The images are very sensitive to the presence of enormous pieces of high Z material, e. g., iron, but unless the spatial resolution is sweet, thin wires can be missed as a result of partial volume effects. It’s also easy to look that an object consisting of a wire or a box- cutter blade, taped to the side of the body, or perhaps a small gun inside the same location, will likely be invisible. While there are technical means to mildly increase the conspicuity of a thick object in air, they’re ineffective for thin objects equivalent to blades after they are aligned on the point of the beam direction.

I guess I’ve never had too much of a problem being scanned, so it’s not even a privacy issue anymore, with me. It’s just the incredible waste of money on an ineffective technology that actually bothers me (more than any curious gloved TSA hand ever could, anyway). I might say an identical of a qualified football team that bought the most recent and greatest hockey sticks for their linemen. [ Journal of Transportation Security (PDF) via Boing Boing http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/11/pornoscanners-trivia.html ]

Source

This post is tagged: enormous pieces, explosive material, partial volume, security technology, spatial resolution, transportation security, volume effects