on this channel in the past i have
learned to
pick a lock to pick a lock with paper
clips
and learned how to crack a combination
padlock so suffice to say my
youtube recommendations are full of lock
picking videos
because google knows what i'm thinking
anyway a few days ago
i saw a video of a guy cracking open a
safe like they do in the movies by
moving
a dial backwards and forwards and
listening for sounds and things like
that
and i didn't actually realize that this
was even possible i thought this was
just a hollywood thing
but i saw it on youtube so it must be
possible so
i bought myself a safe which didn't come
with the right lock so then i had to buy
a dial lock which is actually
surprisingly hard to come by
and we're going to figure out if we can
learn how to do this and how long
it will take first i need to fit this
lock though
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here at the boyd studio we're a very
professional production
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right that doesn't actually look too bad
you wouldn't know that was an absolute
bad job looking at it
all right the lock is fitted now i make
the horrendous error
of placing something valuable in a safe
that i haven't tested
if it even unlocks properly yet
sometimes counterclockwise
as it turns out these combination locks
are actually a bit tricky to open
even if you know the combination then
turn to the right
thank god next
using this little included tool i set a
random combination
without looking at the dial now i'm just
going to lock it and
try to learn how to crack the safe
this is day one hour zero
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so how is it possible to crack a lock
with a million
possible combinations well let's look at
how the lock works
to unlock this you need to get this
lever to drop
in to the latch allowing you to open the
lock
however these little discs stop the
lever from dropping
the discs each have a little notch
called
a gate so that when they're all aligned
the lever can fall
into the latch the position of the gate
corresponds to the number
in the combination the lock has a
mechanism that allows you to set disk
one
then two then three to unlock it
so how do you crack it well by
exploiting
imperfections in the manufacturing you
can see that when
none of the disks are aligned the lever
just glances the latch
on each side if you're careful you can
hear where the contact points are even
when the safe
is closed if one of the discs is in the
correct position
the lever actually drops ever so
slightly further
into the latch there's just a little bit
more
bite there to a skilled safe cracker
this is actually detectable to decode
the full combination
you try to find what number causes the
lever to drop slightly
once you've got that one number you can
use it to try and find
a second and then a third to crack the
safe
the skill is in detecting the tiny
variations in the contact points
and meticulously testing all the way
around
the dial it takes a matter of seconds
to find the contact points on the lock
so i jump straight into working out
the combination to do this most people
i've seen
use a sort of graph or chart to record
how the contact points vary as you move
the dial
i'm using a spreadsheet because
spreadsheets are better
surprisingly it only took around 30
minutes to check
all of the numbers apparently you only
need to test every second number
all right i am sure that i have one of
the numbers
i've went around the whole wheel turning
it the whole way
and testing the contact points and i've
graphed the whole thing and if you look
at the graph
it's really obvious one number sticks
out right there
number 78 or 79.
this seems really clear to me i'm really
certain that it's got to be either 7 to
8 or 79
so now we're going to stick it on 7a and
then try and work out the second wheel
by starting at 0 and going all the way
around to get
filled with confidence at the apparent
absence of
difficulty i continued on to find the
second number
to do this you use the first number you
found and test
in the same manner from the videos i
watched
most of the time the first number you
discover is actually the third number in
the combination
meaning that you kind of work backwards
to crack the safe
that's most of the time apparently i've
been at this for hours now
i think i've got one of the numbers and
i've went around
the entire dial to try and get the
second number
and they all are just exactly the same i
can't there's no discernible difference
for any of the numbers on this dial at
this point i'm not really
sure what to do
so the brilliant solution i came up with
i would do it all again
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of course that didn't work why would
that work
i've obviously got something wrong here
but then i had a bright idea the only
thing i can think of
is if 7 to 8 isn't the third number
but it's actually the first number
so what i have to do is do this all
again but this time
set it to 78 first then try
all of the possible combinations
i actually repeated this process
multiple times over
even believing that i'd got two out of
the three numbers at one point
so one of these numbers is wrong uh
so i guess i'm just gonna have to pick a
wheel and start all over again and
re-graph and see if there's any change
however the learning point here was
realizing the precision required
the lock was giving up its combination i
just wasn't looking closely enough
to give an idea what i'm talking about
the dial is split into 100 numbers
now imagine that each of these intervals
is split into
eight or even ten parts to detect
when one of the disks is in the correct
position you'd have to detect
an eighth of an interval difference on
the contact points
that's the level of precision needed
that sounds crazy
but if you spend all day with this you
start to get a feel for it
so i redid it all over again this time
taking an extra close look
i've went all the way around the dial
again and now i am convinced that the
second number
is not 18 but it's actually 31. now it's
a case of just
going through all possibilities of the
last number that's
zero to 99 and hopefully this will just
open
60 63 70
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73
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[Applause]
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successful
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hey if you enjoy this sort of thing and
puzzles
then i think you'll like my rubik's cube
class
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the list goes on usually skillshare is
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skillshare are sponsoring the show
the first 1000 of my viewers can get a
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of skillshare premium just check the
link below
and thank you very much for watching