What are the chances someone will crack any safe and that it will be a news worthy item?
Sounds like the newest hippest curve ball question on an interview :D
Tourist's lucky guess cracks safe code on first try
21–30 of 118 posts
Re: Tourist's lucky guess cracks safe code on first try
#221 in 216000... seems like you could build some robotic device to brute force that pretty easily... or you know, introduce it to a thermic lance. EDIT: sorry, my research suggests that safe-cracking with thermic lances is plausible but not practical (source; Mythbusters, of course)
+1 for using a robotic cracking device, I would go as far to say that a good hacker could whip something up in a weekend that would have cracked this.
Automatic lock bruteforcers make an occasional appearance on HN and Hackaday:
https://hackaday.com/2011/03/09/automatic-lock-cracker-makes...
Re: Tourist's lucky guess cracks safe code on first try
#231 in 216000... seems like you could build some robotic device to brute force that pretty easily... or you know, introduce it to a thermic lance. EDIT: sorry, my research suggests that safe-cracking with thermic lances is plausible but not practical (source; Mythbusters, of course)
A brute-force robot was my first thought too. It's been done a bunch of times.
Re: Tourist's lucky guess cracks safe code on first try
#241 in 216000... seems like you could build some robotic device to brute force that pretty easily... or you know, introduce it to a thermic lance. EDIT: sorry, my research suggests that safe-cracking with thermic lances is plausible but not practical (source; Mythbusters, of course)
Sure, but an unopened safe with mysterious contents is a better attraction :)
Actually, having that and letting visitors try is really cool.
Re: Tourist's lucky guess cracks safe code on first try
#25What are the chances someone will crack any safe and that it will be a news worthy item? Sounds like the newest hippest curve ball question on an interview :D
The chances of getting to correct number + (the number of news reporters per square mile in the town/total population per square mile)
Re: Tourist's lucky guess cracks safe code on first try
#26"he noted that some combination locks allow for wiggle-room and if this one had a three-digit leeway, Mr Rosenthal put the chances at 1 in 8,000, "which is still a small chance"." If this is the case, and there have been museum visitors having a go at opening the safe each day... this becomes a non story, right?
Humans are terrible at picking random numbers, it's quite likely many people tried the same thing (more or less).
But if the code was set by humans, it just makes finding it even more likely...
Re: Tourist's lucky guess cracks safe code on first try
#27Reminds me of the time I was playing a computer game, and right at the beginning you are presented with a door 5-digit combination lock. The objective of the game was to explore the game world and eventually discover all 5 digits of the code. First time I played the game I just randomly entered 5 digits, and the door unlocked.
We have gotten to that point that so many new games are making references to "0451" being the first door code in old video games (System Shock, Deus Ex), you can pretty reliably use it as a first guess [0].
Re: Tourist's lucky guess cracks safe code on first try
#28If the combination does allow for wiggle room and the 1 in 8000 figure is correct, the code could have been brute forced in a couple hours. Source: my wife has a habit of forgetting the combination to her 3 digit luggage lock and I had to brute force it a few times (it's surprisingly quick, about 15 minutes) :)
Re: Tourist's lucky guess cracks safe code on first try
#29"The fact that the combination was in a specific pattern and did not appear to be a random combination of numbers could also factor into a calculation of the odds, he added." Hehe. I guess he'll have to produce a list of non-random numbers to work those odds out.
Randomness produces patterns all the time, and if we cut out the patterns that appear, then we are selecting the pattern that we’ve labeled as ‘random.’
Humans are terrible at selecting truly random numbers so if the combination was picked by a person, and people who were guessing were also people, then I would say that the odds are significantly better that the safe would be cracked than what you would expect from calculating the permutations.
Re: Tourist's lucky guess cracks safe code on first try
#30If the combination does allow for wiggle room and the 1 in 8000 figure is correct, the code could have been brute forced in a couple hours. Source: my wife has a habit of forgetting the combination to her 3 digit luggage lock and I had to brute force it a few times (it's surprisingly quick, about 15 minutes) :)
Hahah I really appreciate the effort you put in with that