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Found hidden safe, should we crack?
- js2 7y agoLink to photo of safe on page 2 of thread: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=295877&start=50#p4856165 https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=295877&star...
- pengstrom 7y agoDirect link: https://postimg.cc/QK81zbKC https://postimg.cc/QK81zbKC
- why-oh-why 7y agoFor $900 can’t they just buy the required tool to open/break it? Sounds like a waste of money otherwise.
- huhtenberg 7y agoFor $900 they can have it opened without fully destroying it.
- z3t4 7y agoWhen you place something in a safe it's usually important, so there is no chance you would leave it behind when you move out. Should not take too long to try all the combinations though.
- cuu508 7y agoFrom the thread: 90 ^ 5 combinations, that would take quite a bit of time doing it manually ;-)
- alexfoo 7y ago100 ^ 3 if you read the whole thread (or even just read backwards from the end)
- avian 7y agoThat number of combinations is not consistent with the $300 offer from the locksmith company to have a robot try them all in "up to 3 days". 90^5 / 3 / 24 / 3600 = approx. 23000 combinations/s That rate seems much too high, for either a mechanical lock mechanism or an electronic keypad (which I guess would have some kind of lockout for brute forcing anyway).
- JosephRedfern 7y agoIf the robot was able to try every possible combination, why would there not be a 100% chance of success?
- usrusr 7y agoThe lock might be broken? Gummed up lubricants come to mind. No idea if that's a common problem with safes, but it's pretty clear that a safe would not have any outside maintenance access to fix a problem like that (other than drilling it open, which seems to be routine enough given the "yeah, we can make it usable again" offer)
- jandrese 7y agoThe dial spins but the locking mechanism is rusted so you can't tell when you've hit the correct combo.
- desdiv 7y ago1. Faulty lock mechanism due to aging and wear. 2. It's a trap lock and was never designed to be operable in the first place.
- dmurray 7y agoThey may not know how much the slop is, or the exact procedure to open it if you do know the combination (turn left X times, then turn right Y times...). Though you'd expect a locksmith with access to a safe-cracking robot would also have access to documentation showing that. Or as others said, the lock mechanism could be faulty or seized.
- aequitas 7y agoDepending on the quality of the lock there is some play in the mechanism (that is also why lockpicking works). This reduces the number of combinations. If you can lookup (model type documentation) or learn (by feel) how the internal mechanism works you can reduce the amount of combinations to guess even more as you can approach the combination one 'layer' at a time. I once witnessed someone open a safe in a few hours. It is truly amazing to see these kind of proffesionals at work. How they approach this puzzle and the knowledge they can acquire by just feeling. Especially considering it took me a few tries to open the safe when I knew the combination.
- sliken 7y agoThread later on claims it's 100^3. But its not likely to tell the difference between 50-0-50 and 49-0-49. I suspect the "70% chance" for the robot to succeed is because it's going to try every 4th number or 5th number to hugely reduce the search space. Trying every 5th number is just 8000 combinations!
- tom_mellior 7y ago> Should not take too long to try all the combinations though. Define "too long"? The post says it would take a specialized robot up to 3 days, with no guarantee of success.
- haasted 7y agoActually a bit odd that the robot doesn’t have a 100% success rate given enough time and unlimited tries.
- amenod 7y ago> so there is no chance you would leave it behind when you move out Depends on the reason for moving out. Being deceased for example does make keeping material goods a bit more challenging.
- z3t4 7y agoAssuming no-one else knows about the safe. Wouldn't you at least mention it in a will or other document? Or if someone knew you had some stash, wouldn't they look for it? I remember a program on TV, where they opened a few hundred old bank boxes hoping to find a treasure map. They of course did not find anything. Wouldn't you check many times if any box had anything of value before decommissioning them? There is something very exiting and addicting with mystery boxes though...
- Jaruzel 7y agoFavouriting this - as the forum thread doesn't have a conclusion just yet...
- staz 7y agothey were a few of those on reddit at one time, always ended in disappointment
- toyg 7y agoMy thoughts exactly - with plenty of precedents, these “left behind” safes never contain anything interesting. I think the best finding I’ve seen was a couple of handwritten receipts from the early ‘80s.
- brian-armstrong 7y agoSomething Awful, too [1] https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=1164958&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=11...
- aerique 7y agoThat's what I would do when leaving behind a safe in a house: lock it with a note inside with the combination on it.
- rocqua 7y agoIt's a cheap way of getting a floor-mounted safe though.
- gadders 7y agoTangentially related, this was a good article in the Atlantic about a guy who makes his living opening safes: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/professional-safecracker-reveals-his-craft/577897/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/profe... He's got a good instagram page as well: https://www.instagram.com/santore_safecracker/ https://www.instagram.com/santore_safecracker/
- majos 7y agoMore than tangential! For those on the fence, the article is fun. It has some technical details about the actual mechanics of getting inside safes but gets a little into the psychology of it as well. For example, families cracking the safe of a deceased loved one may be both excited, sad, and afraid of what they’ll find (secrets are like that).
- TwoBit 7y ago90% chance it's empty. Only way it's possibly not empty is if previous owner died.
- ddxxdd 7y agoCan't that be tested by banging on the safe to try to set something in motion?
- CriticalCathed 7y agoIt's set into the ground and surrounded by concrete poured around it. Seems like that might not do so good. If I wanted to cheaply find out what was in it I would drill a small hole and use a $20 endoscope. With a Home Depot drill rental you could be out $50 max vs 600-1000 for a locksmith.
- q3k 7y agoA Home Depot drill is not going through the walls of any good safe. Not to mention, just randomly drilling holes in a safe is a pretty bad idea, as it might contain a glass relocker, or any other relocker you might accidentally trigger.
- Intermernet 7y agoAngle grinder and a shit load of disks will usually be sufficient. Takes a while, but unless they have James Bond style poison gas / acid / explosives etc embedded in the safe enclosure you will eventually make it through.
- froindt 7y agoSafety tip: wear safety glasses and a face shield. If the disk breaks off, it can get nasty. Examples: Sewn up - https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3319119/man-carves-open-throat-with-angle-grinder-diy-accident/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3319119/man-carves-open-throat... Grinding wheel still in the face - https://www.reddit.com/r/Welding/comments/1sq6v7/wear_your_faceshields_folks_theres_no_reason_that/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Welding/comments/1sq6v7/wear_your_f...
- voidpointer 7y agoIf it's just about having a usable safe, it's an easy decision. They just need to decide whether the cost for the locksmith is worth it for them to have a usable safe... If it's about what might be in there... shouldn't it be fairly easy to drill a small hole (given the right type of drill) and use a miniature/endoscopic camera to take a look?
- rusticpenn 7y agoWhoops, I seemed to have misplaced my endoscopic camera. \s
- Ensorceled 7y agoThey are dirt cheap on Amazon, around $40 for an inspection camera.
- sneak 7y agoHigh quality safes have glass drill plates that break when drilled and clamp the mechanism shut.
- unnouinceput 7y agoSo? You still have the hole and can peek inside to see if is empty or not. And if it's not then get it out and sledgehammer it in your garden, just for fun, then sell it to your local junk yard. On the other hand, that you want to use it, then design your own robot and try all combinations. There is no time constraint since you're the owner, no need to "finish in 3 days"
- sneak 7y agoIf the safe is high quality, that is a bargain. I was quoted 5x that for a quality tool-resistant safe. Having a safe in one’s home is a useful thing indeed. https://sneak.berlin/20191119/your-money-isnt-yours/ https://sneak.berlin/20191119/your-money-isnt-yours/
- michaelt 7y agoThere's a photo of the safe at [1] revealing it's a Hayman-branded dial floor safe, and the price of a new Hayman dial floor safe is ~$700 [2] Getting a ~$700 safe for $600 with free installation might be a good deal - but only if you were in the market for a $700 safe to begin with :) [1] https://postimg.cc/QK81zbKC https://postimg.cc/QK81zbKC [2] https://www.safesetc.com/brands-hayman-safes-hayman-floor-safes.html https://www.safesetc.com/brands-hayman-safes-hayman-floor-sa...
- jaclaz 7y agoNice find. It doesn't seem in any way a "safe" safe, it is just a very ordinary low-cost "home" safe, it shouldn't be that dificult to open it, it looks similar to the one that Sparkfun's Nathan Seidle founder opened up with an (el-cheapo, around 200 US$ in parts) self- made robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fTz2D6x20U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fTz2D6x20U This article details how the actual possible combinations are much less than the theorical ones on these "home" safes: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/safecrack-robot-defcon25,news-25557.html https://www.tomsguide.com/us/safecrack-robot-defcon25,news-2... And here is the full tutorial/howto: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/building-a-safe-cracking-robot/all https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/building-a-safe-crackin...
- cranium 7y agoI don't know if the mechanism is loose enough to accept multiple combinations as valid inputs but it can drastically reduce the search space. For instance, if the safe also accepts the numbers before and after the correct one the search space is divided by 3^[number of 'digits']. Feynman was famous for "cracking" safes in his time (more like cleverly trying all possibilities): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waw11zhaKSk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waw11zhaKSk
- tomxor 7y agoI think you mean de Bruijn sequence [0], can be hard to reach via search if you don't know the name. > a de Bruijn sequence of order n on a size-k alphabet A is a cyclic sequence in which every possible length-n string on A occurs exactly once as a substring (i.e., as a contiguous subsequence). Such a sequence is denoted by B(k, n) and has length k^n, which is also the number of distinct substrings of length n on A; de Bruijn sequences are therefore optimally short. That is, it reduces the total number of input symbols required to traverse all permutations from (k^n)*n to (k^n)+n-1. i.e each sequence attempt takes only one extra input symbol regardless of the code length (n) or alphabet (k). Once I learned this (actually originally ended up figuring out for k=2 since google failed to reveal this page), I started to notice the critical difference between short 4 digit permutation keypads on doors: those that accept a continuous stream of input characters without a reset are vulnerable to this shortened brute force sequence; whereas those that require you delimit sequences with a separate key are not. Specifically: a non-delimited 4 digit decimal keypad takes at most 10003 input chars to crack, whereas a delimited one with a reset button takes 50000 (~5 times more, n+1 for the reset button). I'm not sure if continuous form are merely cheaper or the delimited form are simply newer and lock makers a little wiser? [edit] I suppose in the worst case for the non-delimited 4 digit keypads, if you also figure out the subset of alphabet used (i.e UV light button trick), then it reduces to (n^n)+n-1 = 259 input symbols !! except it adds the requirement of generating the sequence dynamically... but that's hardly difficult for n=k=4... and if any buttons are used more than once it reduces k further! e.g if a button is used twice then (4^3)+4-1 = 67! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence
- 7y ago
- anon9001 7y agoHere's a way to decode it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_lkYQ88kv0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_lkYQ88kv0 Looks kind of fun.
- AnnoyingSwede 7y agoI looked into safe cracking a while back and it seems most of them are sustainable to various attacks. Instead of spending a dime on what's most likely empty safe i would make it a funny family hobby to try to break it. If they have no use of the safe afterwards i would apply more brute force, seeing they are not limited by time. Drilling a hole and inserting an endoscope would be a fast solution, but would ruin the challenge of breaking it :)
- salex89 7y agoA lot of people suggesting just to forget about it. Jeez, I couldn't sleep properly until I found out what's inside. I would personally be more disappointed in myself for ignoring it than opening it and finding nothing. At least I would have a safe. On the other hand, I would try cracking it myself, for fun. If not, call someone.
- johmue 7y agoat this point I am so invested in it that I can already not sleepy over it!
- d--b 7y agoI bought an apartment and even though there was no safe, I was tempted to remove the flooring everywhere just to see what was beneath it... I wouldn't last a second without opening that safe. I'd probably try and make the robot myself though :-)
- thathndude 7y agoSame. I own a 100+ year old home, and I often think “what if some rich eccentric stashed gold in the walls?!” I’d go the brute force method, personally. That safe would get opened . . .
- aidos 7y agoWe own a 100 year old place that we’ve been renovating for the last 2 months (when we took ownership). I found a (small) stash of money under the carpet (about £200 in pristine 1990s notes). That’s probably the best thing I found. Less savoury was the discovery that the house was, in fact, owned by rats. They were everywhere. There was a lovely little nest made from a bag of straw and lined with a newspaper from 1938. They’d eaten into the expansion tanks in the loft so they had a fresh supply of water.
- checkyoursudo 7y agoBased on the couple of houses I have purchased in my life, rodents own a lot of things. Until you bring the cats into your life. Then the rodents don't own as much. You still don't own anything either, because the cats become the new owners, but they are at least preferable to the rodents. ;)
- rch 7y agoYou might have better luck rooting around in your back yard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privy_digging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privy_digging
- exikyut 7y agoYou could theoretically look through all the walls with an old dental X-Ray unit. I remember reading an article on here about someone who reverse-engineered an X-Ray-sensitive camera module and used an old dental emitter as the source. All the radiation shielding would obviously be get important. :D
- bauc 7y agoIs the cover plate concealing a backup key lock? Call in the lock picking lawyer. Seems like many safes/locks don't stand up much to experienced attacks.
- devurand 7y agoI am glad I wasn't the only person thinking about LPL for this. I wonder how much he would charge for a internet consult and recommendations on tools. Might end up being way less than the try-every-combination-or-we-drill-it locksmiths that are an hour awway
- Consultant32452 7y agoSince this is now somewhat famous, LPL will get a lot of views for opening this. As long as he can make a video about it, he should be able to do it free and turn a tidy profit.
- elaus 7y agoOpens the lock after wiggling for 3 seconds… That's all I have for you today!
- cryptoquick 7y agoi've played enough RPGs to know you should be careful in case it's boobytrapped be sure to raise your perception
- ragebol 7y agoHaha, recently bought a new home which also had a safe embedded in the concrete under the flooring.Place was apparently owned by a dude who had been in jail, a few owners back, to add to the 'story'. Key was present but not the code, which would be useless as the know was rusted in place and wouldn't move. In the end we drilled a hole through the top plate (did not take very long but made a lot of noise) and stuck a little camera through to find it was empty (as far as we could see). Cemented over it, new floor over that, left as a surprise to future owners.
- Consultant32452 7y agoIt would've been fun to put some piece of treasure for the next adventurer. Maybe a time capsule or even a single silver coin (only about $20) would really delight someone. This has me thinking I should do something like this in my house.
- MoD411 7y agoSo now you have something to play with every night before going to sleep :D Just try some combinations for 15 mins per day :)
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoOR make a jig to try combinations, leave it running for the next two years until it opens? Imagine the fun, solenoids and stepper motors and embedded firmware and interface apps!
- aaron695 7y agoUnknown safes are like unboxing videos for adults. I'm surprised there's not a TV show yet. A couple have been faked for karma but since no one has figured a way to make money yet most seem real. https://www.reddit.com/r/WhatsInThisThing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WhatsInThisThing/ The catch is, if it has anything the person will not follow up, else someone might claim it or the police might take away their new drug stash and weapons.
- imgabe 7y agoOh god, it's the Reddit safe drama all over again. I'm not falling for it this time.
- jandrese 7y agoThe Reddit safe drama was predated by Geraldo Rivera's attempt to find treasure in Al Capone's vault.
- slowenough 7y agoProbably just a jewelry box and some old letters.
- slowenough 7y agoProbably just a jewelry box and some old letters.
- slowenough 7y agoProbably just a jewelry box and some old letters.
- patsplat 7y agoOnce I lived in an apartment with a safe that had been locked open. It was a giant, heavy thing too large to move. The owners simply renovated the apartment around it. Eventually I got bored and started playing with it. Since it was locked open, it was possible to start taking apart the door from the inside. Once the tumblers were exposed, I figured out the combination. It was tremendous fun! If anyone here is in a similar situation, I recommend cracking the safe. Building the robot seems like a nice bit of mechanical engineering: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/building-a-safe-cracking-robot/all https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/building-a-safe-crackin...
- memco 7y agoI’m wondering if there’s any statistical analysis of the value of the items inside any given safe? It would seem as this phenomena happens more and more it would be valuable to have an aggregated list of the number of safes we’ve tried to open and the eventual value of the contents so we can better asses how much work to put into opening this new one.
- sopooneo 7y agoHow is the min $600 and the max $1,050? By my tally, the min is $150 for one days rt travel (assuming rt = back and forth) + $300 for combo machine = $450 And max would be $150/day * 4 (3 days combo machine + 1 day drilling) + $300 combo machine + $600 drilling - $300 credited from combo machine = $1,200 Not that this is important to the story, but it bugs me when I'm clearly missing something.
- riversflow 7y agoI think the expectation is that the locksmith would have to travel twice, once to setup the safe cracker, and once to pick it up. ( $150 x 2 ) + $300 = $600 That said: If the safe is old and the locksmith is pretty good, there's a legit possibility that the locksmith could just crack the safe. I had an old safe worked on and the locksmith told me he could open it without the combo just from the feel of the tumblers.
- chatman 7y agoJust do an x-ray to find out what is inside.
- ebg13 7y agoIgnoring the fact that a transmissive X-ray image requires something to be on the other side of the object to catch the rays that pass through, have you ever tried passing X-rays through metal?
- RickJWagner 7y agoBTW, this site (Bogleheads.org) is an awesome financial advice site. Lots of smart people, willing to share with you ways to live below your means and invest the difference. Great place.