Comments on: Gentle Safe Cracker

By: smith beach

smith beach — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:59:44 +0000

this is very special and added numerous things that is very important. on the other hand, from some days, i has been looking for this kind of documents and got it. this is really good.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 06:06:59 +0000

So, I just happened to stumble across this site, and I have been trying a similar project of my own, except I have been attempting to crack it by feel and by sound. There is a book that is called “The Art of Manipulation” by Clyde Lentz that I have heard is an extremely helpful tool. The only problem is I cannot seem to find a copy anywhere ha. Hope to see you crack it soon….good luck.

By: ryan

ryan — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:51:59 +0000

Check these guys out. Their work is on Master locks but it might have some helpful info.

http://students.olin.edu/2013/jnoglows/The_LockCracker/Video.html

By: Tux

Tux — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 19:44:53 +0000

C’mon Carlitos! Make it work! I’ve been wanting to know what’s in that box for over a year now!

By: Carlitos

Carlitos — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 05:57:56 +0000

@Will Not yet. I tried my stepper motor plan only to find out that the stepper was not powerful enough. The poor motor skipped so many steps that it ended up damaged >:(. I am seriously contemplating a more forceful approach.

By: Will

Will — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 17:05:21 +0000

HEY DID YOU OPEN IT YET??? I know alot of us want to know wat the contents are

By: David

David — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 22:07:31 +0000

Hi! Really nice site!. btw did you open the safe?

Venezuela says hi!

By: Carlitos

Carlitos — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:56:53 +0000

@Tony Not yet.

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:33:36 +0000

Hi. Found your site. Just curious, did you ever get the safe open?

By: Tux

Tux — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:33:35 +0000

Did you ever get the safe open? The question of what was inside burns!

By: Gentle safe cracker | Hack a Day Thailand

Gentle safe cracker | Hack a Day Thailand — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:00:26 +0000

[...] to find out what is inside? Hack it open? Smash it? Blow it up? No, the best solution is to build a robot to try brute force cracking. The robot, housed in an old power supply case, is little more than a servo and a servo controller, [...]

By: Oooli

Oooli — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:39:12 +0000

Hi ,i have hotel safe box around 50 pc’s and all of them locked and need to open so we can put them in the hotel rooms we buy it second hand can any body help(Elsafe) the name of the manfacture.
thanks

By: Bruce J Tarbet, CML, CPS

Bruce J Tarbet, CML, CPS — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:20:52 +0000

@clckwrk
This lock has 3 wheels with 0-99 or 1-100 on each wheel. That is 100 x 100 x 100 = 1,000,000 possible combinations.( 100³ ) Also someone sugested using some oil product on the lock…well just DON’T, it will gum up the fly’s in the wheels of the lock. A vital part of the wheel.
Bruce

By: Gentle Safe Cracker – The Ultimate Device to Crack Your Safe Box! - CircuitGeek

Gentle Safe Cracker – The Ultimate Device to Crack Your Safe Box! - CircuitGeek — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:15:00 +0000

[...] savor! Instead of break the safe box by cutting holes into it walls or removing the hinges, the Gentle Safe Cracker perhaps the best solution [...]

By: CB

CB — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:43:54 +0000

From Wikipedia:
“Additionally, if testing the mechanism to open the lock does not modify the state of the lock, multiple combinations can be tried sequentially, drastically reducing the brute force search time. The first two digits are entered normally once, then, starting from the second digit, the dial is rotated sequentially through the digits, testing the lock on each. If it takes three seconds to input the first digit, two seconds for the second digit, and one second for the third digit, then the normal search time for a 60-number dial with three cams would be (3 + 2 + 1) × 60³. The reduced search time would be (3 + 2 + 60) × 60², a reduction of nearly 82% from 360 hours to 65 hours. This strategy can be extended to the second digit as well, slightly reducing the search time further.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_lock)
All of the time estimates you’ve made and in the comments are fairly overestimated. You don’t need to run a sequence for 10R-30L-40R AND 10R-30L-20R. You will only need to run the first two digits (assuming you are right in your assumptions about a 3 number code), and then you can just step through the last 50 digits. Like the wiki article says, this reduces your time dramatically. Assuming ~2 second per digit with your cracker on the first two digits and maybe ~10 seconds on the last digit, you are looking at ~14 seconds to try 50 codes. This leaves you with 50x50x50 = (125,000 * 14) / 50 = 35,000 seconds = ~9.72 hours.
Cheers! You’ve inspired me to take a crack at an automated safe cracker! There are also several great articles out there on the algorithms to determine the codes for combination locks.

By: Carlitos

Carlitos — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:58:52 +0000

@Hoborg Hoborg, Thanks for the kind words. I will certainly post the update in here.

By: Hoborg

Hoborg — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 19:51:49 +0000

What a nice project you have started here! I will look forward to read about your next attempt to crack it.. Will you post the rest of the story here or will you do that another place? I can’t wait to see where this is going… :0)

By: Carlitos

Carlitos — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:17:50 +0000

@oysters
Oysters,
I have no clue. But crime and stealthy things are very interesting so I’ll hypothesize an answer. First, you get a sample video feed form the cameras on a normal day. Than, the day you want to have a go at the safe you cut the cameras and feed back the recorded signal. Then, you put a little safe cracker on the safe and wait for it to do the job. You might also want to disguise the cracker by giving it a distracted expression to his eyes. That way, people wont notice it is cracking the safe for many days on a row

By: oysters

oysters — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:09:59 +0000

I need to get into a safe. It’s a fairly large safe. It’s about four feet in height, probably weighs a lot. haha.
And there are cameras about. It would be dark though…possibly the cameras do not have night vision. Not for sure though.
How should I go about this?

By: Carlitos

Carlitos — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:10:47 +0000

Thanks again for all the comments and suggestions.

As suggested by a few of you, I plan on trying even (or maybe multiples of 3) combinations first and hope for it to work. Since this lock doesn’t look particularly sophisticated, it should allow some play.

As for the gearing, The backlash should not have that much effect (because of the play the lock may allow) but as soon as I get a stepper motor, I won’t need any gears whatsoever.

Also, I was planing to put a switch on the lid aligned with the gap between the body and the lid. The This would allow to stop the operations as soon as the safe opens and to retrieve the combination.

BTW, I really appreciate all the comments about safes and tumblers and preloading the lock. I am not particularly knowledgeable in those areas so I feel I’m learning a lot.

Finally, for the record, I tried to listen to the clicks. I could hear some but most of the time I miss them. I tried hooking up a microphone (since I don’t know any hot nurses with stethoscopes) and to crank the volume to the max but it did not work. That is why I decided a robot was the way to go.

By: creid

creid — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:54:45 +0000

For the mechanicals can i make a couple suggestions? Those look like cheap printer etc gears. You’re going to get tons of back(and forward!)lash. Try a gear/belt/gear system. Even with those it might work. You can buy a good system ( few bucks per gear plus a same for the belts) pretty cheap. Cant think of the company but its stpi or something that has what you need.

Use steppers. Bipolar if you can.

By: RudyDanielle

RudyDanielle — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:56:11 +0000

Just a thought, have you considered contacting the manufacturer or even a code source program like this one ……. http://www.hpcworld.com/Software/w_cscd.htm

By: AM

AM — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:14:14 +0000

Just a thought. Did you make sure the locking mechanism actually works? If it doesn’t click at all when you turn it, the dial may be broken off from the rest of the mechanism.

By: Jarkman

Jarkman — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 08:47:16 +0000

@Alex
No, I don’t think that’s a Manifoil. For a start, the dial only goes to 50.

The Manifoil is a reasonably fancy lock, and doesn’t have any kind of a click to indicate when each number is reached. Nothing touches the wheels (to test if they are in the right position) until the very end of the unlocking sequence. Here’s a nice set of internal pics of one:
http://www.timwarriner.com/manifoil/page2.html

I believe that good combination locks are actually defended against these brute-force attacks – they are built to wear out more quickly than they can be brute-forced. But I don’t think Carlito’s lock is one of those!

By: Kyle Vogt

Kyle Vogt — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:29:09 +0000

Awesome project! Great use of simple tools to get the job done.

Reminds me of the safe cracker I made at MIT a few years back: http://web.mit.edu/kvogt/www/safecracker.html