Posted by Dan on Mar 1, 2015
Digital Lock Pick – Intro
Headline Image: Author: Mr Hicks46 | Licence: Human | Borg [Part 1: Introduction] [Part 2: Keypads] You probably don’t know this, but I am quite proficient with a set of traditional Lock Picks; I carry a set with me everywhere I go, of course, I don’t use them for illegal activities, that would be, well, illegal. I remember the day when I successfully picked my first lock, it was amazing and then it was very scary. All of a sudden, the door locks and padlocks that you think are doing a really good job of protecting your stuff, aren’t doing a very good job at all. In fact, they’re doing a terrible job. These days I’m very, very picky about choosing new locks. Recently, I was watching Chuck on Netflix, which is excellent, in fact, I liked it so much I bought the box set on iTunes. And whilst what I’m about to mention is in no way exclusive to Chuck, it was Chuck that put this idea into my head. Author: Matti Mattila Licence: Human | Borg You see more and more doors these days that are secured with a Keypad entry system. With such a system you enter a 4 digit PIN (usually, although sometimes more digits) and the door opens. This got me wondering; can a laymen, such as myself, build a device that will open a keypad door? (I would insert a picture of a keypad door hacker here, but with Creative Commons turned on, I was unable to find a single image that looks even remotely like the sort of keypad hacker you see in films and TV shows, suffice to say, watch Chuck S1E4 from 20mins 15seconds. And then watch all of Chuck.) You see these devices in movies and TV shows all the time, but can a normal person, using normal off the shelf parts build a real life digital lock pick? So this is the question I’ve been trying to answer for the last week, and I think I now have the answer; I think the answer is Yes. PIN Basics The first step is to do some simple maths to work out what sort of numbers we’re dealing with here. In everyday life we use Decimal, or the Base 10 counting system, which is where we have 10 symbols to represent numbers, namely...
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