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How to crack a master lock

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11–20 of 52 posts

Re: How to crack a master lock

#12
post #5
post #3

Very fascinating and a good thing to keep in mind if I ever forget my combination lock number, thought that's unlikely. The only thing you would use this for is breaking into other people's locks. ;)

Not necessarily. It would take ~10-15 minutes of straight work to get this (more for your first few tries), so you can't really open a lock in a public place this way. On the other hand, it means you can pick up locks that the owner doesn't know the code to, and make them usable again by "recovering" the code.

If social engineering taught me anything it is not only could I spent 15 minutes at the lock, but I could even print this out and tape it to the wall in front of me. I forgot my lock combo and am trying to recover it, thats all. Someone might even come over and help :)

Re: How to crack a master lock

#15

Why are all the comments mentioning picking the back of the lock now [dead]?

A very good question. The same thing happened a little over a week ago, when a moderator deep-sixed all submissions of a particular thirtyseven signals post (sorry, I am avoiding regex bait now).

In fact, it appears that my account which attempted to post the aforementioned story is crippled, which is to say that all comments posted thereafter are auto-killed, yet do not appear so when I am logged in.

Another good question: does it bother anyone else that superuser-level moderation occurs in secret without any public recourse or justification?

Re: How to crack a master lock

#16
post #12
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. It would take ~10-15 minutes of straight work to get this (more for your first few tries), so you can't really open a lock in a public place this way. On the other hand, it means you can pick up locks that the owner doesn't know the code to, and make them usable again by "recovering" the code.

If social engineering taught me anything it is not only could I spent 15 minutes at the lock, but I could even print this out and tape it to the wall in front of me. I forgot my lock combo and am trying to recover it, thats all. Someone might even come over and help :)

I've read about fascinating sociology experiment along those lines. A sociologist was planted on a busy street, obviously trying to open a car door lock with a bent wire. The car contained an expensive television. No one called the police, they just looked at him curiously and kept walking.

Re: How to crack a master lock

#17
You can also develop hyper sensitivity in you finger tips and feel when lock aligns. Lock pickers like this can allegedly detect the tip of a feather brushing against a toothpick being moved by the lock they are picking.

Re: How to crack a master lock

#19
post #6
post #3

Very fascinating and a good thing to keep in mind if I ever forget my combination lock number, thought that's unlikely. The only thing you would use this for is breaking into other people's locks. ;)

Well, the information has been out there for more than a decade, but this is a really cool way to represent the process. There are also a lot of faster ways to get past a $5 Master combination lock, so this method is really only useful if you want to deduce the combination of a lock -- for instance, if you found one on the side of the road, or you cared about not only opening it, but being able to open it in the futu…

It's described in Feynman's biography 20 years ago - only for safes holding the designs of the atom bomb!

Re: How to crack a master lock

#20

Why are all the comments mentioning picking the back of the lock now [dead]?

A very good question. The same thing happened a little over a week ago, when a moderator deep-sixed all submissions of a particular thirtyseven signals post (sorry, I am avoiding regex bait now). In fact, it appears that my account which attempted to post the aforementioned story is crippled, which is to say that all comments posted thereafter are auto-killed, yet do not appear so when I am logged in. Another good qu…

Yes it bothers me very much, if they wanna cripple someone's account why not just admit it?They are the superuser moderators, who's gonna go against them?
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