1 HN user recommended this demo1 month2018–2025score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Used to illustrate that fire safes protect against fire and not theft, and that brute force often defeats low-security containers.
LockPickingLawyer shows a Sentry fire safe being cut in half with a saw in a few minutes. It is a short demonstration that these safes offer little protection against a determined thief.
“For surprise of tool used the saw vs safe are the best” (HN, 2025)
Finding vulnerabilities in low security locks is just an academic exercise. If you need high security, you are buying a product very different than a master lock, and you need to consider the integrity of the entire system it is connected to. Low security locks work mainly by deterrent, and even if they were without vulnerability, the container you’re attaching it to probably is vulnerable. Brute force attacks are the much more common scenario against low security locks, and there’s not much of a low cost solution to that; it requires expensive materials: [this video] If you put an unpickable lock on sheet metal box, you’re spending more money, but not actually improving security. The reason that master locks are popular is because they are fairly reliable, easy to get keys for, have useful feature sets, etc. These are the features that commercial users often care about the most. They don’t want to spend more money to get an unpickable lock that interrupts their daily business when it inevitably gets dirty, keys are lost, etc. especially if it provides no additional resistance against an angle grinder.
Shows brute force defeating low-security containers.
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