Interview with a Safecracker
The legal kind. It’s interesting:
Q: How realistic are movies that show people breaking into vaults?
A: Not very! In the movies it takes five minutes of razzle-dazzle; in real life it’s usually at least a couple of hours of precision work for an easy, lost combination lockout.
[…]
Q: Have you ever met a lock you couldn’t pick?
A: There are several types of locks that are designed to be extremely pick-resistant, as there are combination safe locks that can slow down my efforts at manipulation.
I’ve never met a safe or lock that kept me out for very long. Not saying I can’t be stumped. Unknown mechanical malfunctions inside a safe or vault are the most challenging things I have to contend with and I will probably see one of those tomorrow since you just jinxed me with that question.
Clive Robinson • May 29, 2012 7:26 AM
I’ve never met a safe or lock that kept me out for very long. Not saying I can’t be stumped
And in the physical world he never will….
It’s almost a given that all mechanical devices have “slop” in their design, it’s actuall more important than “lubrication” to the long and successful working of a mechanical device.
Without it the lock would due to a whole host of reasons “bind” up and be usless.
Also at the end of the day all mechanical things break no matter how well you design them “entropy” will have it’s way. And if you. are designing a safe it’s important that you have weak points so you can still get it open even if the lock does break.
Anyone who things otherwise is going to be in for a sad and sorry awakening at some point unless they are short lived.
We people who work with information think we can design unbreakable information systems and in certain respects we can. But to be usefull all of these fancy information systems have to work in the physical universe we inhabit that we sometimes call “the real world”. This means even fancy information systems are vulnerable to times arrow and it’s hand maiden entropy.
As has been observed before “-ou can’t cheat Old Father Time”…
Which is why those dealing in physical security talk of security absoluts but time. In France they have one word for both security and safety, and we know very well from safty systems we don’t talk about fire proof but time ratings for resistance such as A30 and A60, where those numbers mean minutes.