Security seals are widely used to detect tampering or unauthorized entry.

Tamper-indicating seals have been used by customs officials for over 7,000 years. Today, seals are widely used to help counter theft, smuggling, sabotage, vandalism, terrorism, and espionage.

Sandia National Laboratories was asked to evaluate the seals used as tamper-indicating devices (TIDs) at DOE facilities. Initially, a survey determined what seal manufacturers were being used and what similar seal types were available.

A tamper resistant seal is made of a brittle material with internal defects internally arranged in a random pattern to form a unique fingerprint characteristic of the seal which may be identified by ultrasonic scanning to determine whether ...

Confidence in the means for identifying when tampering occurs is critical for containment and surveillance technologies.

SRNL has developed the mechanical design of the seal in an iterative process incorporating comments from the SNL vulnerability review team.

Most of these seals are in wide-spread use, including for critical applications. We learned how to defeat all 94 seals using rapid, inexpensive, low-tech methods. Cost was not a good predictor of seal security.

However, we continue to focus on qualities required by DOE: durability and tamper resistance. The seals are comparatively rated, and recommendations are made for using currently available seals and new tamper-indicating device technology.