On Nov 2, 2010, at 2:34 PM, Eric Sorenson wrote: > 5 digits is a lot to brute-force, but I agree with an upthread poster that by > applying a little tension you can probably hear/feel the tumblers when they > fall into place.
I once brute-forced the combination to a door that had a lock identical to the image I found at <http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/objects-equipment/3839787-electronic-keypad-on-door.php?id=3839787>. It was the door to the Team Chief's office in the Logistics Readiness Center within the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon, during the early days of Desert Shield. This was the first day that a new Team Chief was on duty, and he was going to be late to the meeting to brief the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (back when Colin Powell held that job), but he'd left his briefing slides in the office and had forgotten the combination. Took me less than two minutes, and that was actually twice as long as it should have, because I made an initial complete run through the list of all possible numbers while turning the doorknob the wrong way. How fast can you say "tick-tick-tick-turn", and then repeat that enough times to find the combo? Once I figured out the combination, I handed that information over to the Executive Officer on duty (as well as the Team Chief), and told them that they would probably want to change the combination as soon as they could. Combination locks can be amazingly easy and quick to brute-force, even if they are Military-grade. -- Brad Knowles <b...@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu> _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list Tech@lists.lopsa.org http://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
