I'm getting a DIEBOLD FILE SAFE that is about 5 feet tall and 3 feet
wide, double doors. Its locked and there's no combination so I'm
probably giong to have to drill the door to get into the combination
lock.

I had thought about cutting the bottom panel out of it to gain entry
then welding it back in as I did with a Wendy's Restaurant money safe
but I don't know if there are any partitions in this box.

I have a TAYLOR safe which I successfully drilled, thanks to a
locksmith years ago but I have since lost track of him.

I'm looking for a locksmith or someone else who will tell me what the
correct drill point is.

On Sun, 07 Oct 2012 12:13:41 -0400, Ro Grrr <rog...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

Good luck on anyone just coming out and telling you how to break into
it - without asking for a cut of the loot inside...  The whole idea of
a safe is to be resistant to forced entry, and especially on high end
items like Diebold there are elaborate safeguards inside to make it
slow and difficult on purpose.

Any ethical locksmith, the first thing he does is check you out to
make sure you're in lawful possession of that safe and should be let
inside.  And this might involve a three-way discussion with Local Law
Enforcement.  If he busts into a stolen safe for you, he becomes an
accessory to the original crime - and he doesn't want that.  

Then once you pass that test, he takes your money, wanders off to a
secure area with the safe - or shoos you out of the room if he has to
do it in place -  while he breaks into the safe. No pictures or video
allowed.

Then he installs a new lock (set to the combination you want) and
takes the remains of the old lock with him for disposal so you can't
see how it was done.

And the unethical Locksmiths are usually in prison, or working in
another profession.  The licensing is too stringent, and you don't
work in the field without one.

If you want to see how the locking mechanism of your safe works,
you'll have to take the door apart yourself later on your own.

--<< Bruce >>--

On 2012-10-07, Ro Grrr <rog...@hotmail.com> wrote:

        The first thing to do is try the "storage" combination, and the
reverse of that in case someone mis-remembered the order when setting it
for storage.

        Starting to the left:

        50 L (past three times and then stop on)
        25 R (past two times and then stop on)
        50 L (past once and then stop on)
        0  R (and then either continue if there is not a turn bar
                in the center of the knob, or Turn the bar and go back
                left until it stops.

or perhaps (same pattern)

        25
        50
        25
        0

        If it is the one which I dealt with at work, there are three
full-width shelves inside it.  I never tried to change the height, so
I'm not sure whether they are movable or not, but I think that they are.
We had some interesting classified hardware stored in the bottom of one
of them.

        And I believe that these were made to resist fire, so they have
a thick wall full of asbestos-concrete, which I believe also applies to
the floor of the cabinet.

        Typically, these things (Diebold, Mosler and similar) have a
layer of really nasty stuff to drill through.  A mix of concrete, old
indexable tool inserts, broken file fragments, and anything else to make
the task much more difficult.

        Good Luck,
                DoN.

--
                  Remove oil spill source from e-mail
 Email: <BPdnichol...@d-and-d.com>   | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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           --- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

I go to auctions and I often see safes without keys. They have next to
no scrap value, due to concrete between the walls.

Therefore, they usually are free or almost free to take.

I may just buy a couple and try to open them and perhaps shoot a
couple of videos on "how to open a safe with a torch".

i

On 2012-10-07, DoN. Nichols <BPdnichol...@d-and-d.com> wrote:

A few safes that I saw, would be easy to open from the bottom with a
torch.

i

No honorable locksmith would ever divulge security information like that.
Shame on you for asking a locksmith to dishonor himself.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
  www.lds.org
.

news:ln9378dloir0o9tdli0r6e4ig79cneqkrs@4ax.com...

I'm getting a DIEBOLD FILE SAFE that is about 5 feet tall and 3 feet
wide, double doors. Its locked and there's no combination so I'm
probably giong to have to drill the door to get into the combination
lock.

I had thought about cutting the bottom panel out of it to gain entry
then welding it back in as I did with a Wendy's Restaurant money safe
but I don't know if there are any partitions in this box.

I have a TAYLOR safe which I successfully drilled, thanks to a
locksmith years ago but I have since lost track of him.

I'm looking for a locksmith or someone else who will tell me what the
correct drill point is.

You, I like!

On a slightly related subject. I was approached a couple weeks ago. There is
a lock picking club in a city near me. They wanted me to attend their
meetings and possibly teach lock picking. I managed to remain far more
polite than he deserved, and declined. Which, writing here, is far more
polite than I wish to wrote.

I've been in the locksmith trade since 1985.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
  www.lds.org
.

"Bruce L. Bergman (munged human readable)"
<bruceNOSPAMberg...@gmail.INVALID> wrote

Good luck on anyone just coming out and telling you how to break into
it - without asking for a cut of the loot inside...  The whole idea of
a safe is to be resistant to forced entry, and especially on high end
items like Diebold there are elaborate safeguards inside to make it
slow and difficult on purpose.

Any ethical locksmith, the first thing he does is check you out to
make sure you're in lawful possession of that safe and should be let
inside.  And this might involve a three-way discussion with Local Law
Enforcement.  If he busts into a stolen safe for you, he becomes an
accessory to the original crime - and he doesn't want that.

Then once you pass that test, he takes your money, wanders off to a
secure area with the safe - or shoos you out of the room if he has to
do it in place -  while he breaks into the safe. No pictures or video
allowed.

Then he installs a new lock (set to the combination you want) and
takes the remains of the old lock with him for disposal so you can't
see how it was done.

And the unethical Locksmiths are usually in prison, or working in
another profession.  The licensing is too stringent, and you don't
work in the field without one.

If you want to see how the locking mechanism of your safe works,
you'll have to take the door apart yourself later on your own.

--<< Bruce >>--

On 10/7/2012 8:14 PM, Stormin Mormon wrote:

So, locksmiths have greater integrity than the rest of us?  And does
becoming a locksmith require an FBI background check to insure
honorable-ity, or what?  I seem to recall "Study at Home to be a
Locksmith" ads in Popular Mechanics - how did they screen students?

Please.

Bob

On Sun, 07 Oct 2012 17:31:22 -0500, Ignoramus25258

  Iggy, I strongly suggest you resist the urge.  Unless you want a
creative prosecutor to find your training video on the would-be Safe
Cracker's computer and charge you as an Accessory...

Just because you CAN do something does not mean you SHOULD.

Commercial Burglary Resistant Safes are rated at how long it takes the
average crook without insider knowledge to get into them - and the
longer they fumble around with it, the greater chances they get caught
in the act.  

You 'blow the curve' by teaching the crooks how to do it, and the FBI
isn't going to be happy with you.

--<< Bruce >>--

On 2012-10-08, Bruce L. Bergman (munged human readable) <bruceNOSPAMberg...@gmail.INVALID> wrote:

I call this bullshit. Seriously.

I am sure that they will not care. There is no law that says I cannot
film how I break into a safe that I own.

i

Take a look here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRUwkT3W5Nk

There are a lot of articles about using a stepper or servo motor to try all the combinations.
In Richard Feynman's book, he mentioned that just Any number might also get the two adjacent numbers. So, about 15 stops on the dial might cover all possible numbers. Depending on the quality of the lock.

Is it unethical for locksmiths to allow anyone else to do things on their own?
And by the code of ethics, everyone MUST pay the locksmith's hourly rate, or else?
Is that similar to the code of ethics of magicians, not to reveal the secrets?

Just curious.

Maybe have a look at episode 2 of the British channel 4 programme "Man
Made Home" where they make a home made thermal lance to cut open a safe
to convert to a wood stove. Shame it's not BBC as that doesn't have
commercials and I can't remember whether it was the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd
part of the programme that they cut the safe. When you see the result
though it didn't really look like a thermal lance was required just a OA
cutter or plasma might have done as the safe looked to be single skinned
and not that thick but the lance made for good viewing I expect.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/kevin-mcclouds-man-made-home/4od#3...

On 2012-10-08, David Billington <d...@djbillington.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

A lance is needed to cut through concrete.

i

On 2012-10-08, Cross-Slide <3...@centurytel.net> wrote:

        [ ... ]

        Hmm ... I don't see anything actually trying the handle after
each set of combination numbers were dialed in, so I'm not sure how it
would know when it was done.  (And I really hate those stop-motion
"videos" which really don't show you much of what is happening.

        Hmm ... that would cover 45 numbers -- and the kind of locks on
the secure storage cabinet which started this have 100 digits on the
dial, so you would need 33 tries not fifteen to cover all the positions
with one rotation of the dial.  And since the combination has three
numbers (dial positions), with multiple turns between most of them, that
adds up to nearly 36,000 tries so even at the relative speed of the
stepper operation, it would take quite a while.

        And from experience with those locks, I think that they are a
bit tighter than three adjacent numbers possibly working -- it was so
easy to overshoot the target numbers and have to do it again.  (This
also said that you have to turn *slowly*, or the notched disk can
overshoot the dial when you stop.)  This, in the S&G ones.  The Diebold
ones (or was it Mosler) at work had very light plastic discs, and rather
stiff to turn dials, so it was less likely to overshoot.

        Hmm ... I never had one of my own of those to play with (unlike
the S&Gs which were fitted to a lot of a dozen of the security file
cabinets which a friend and I got at a surplus auction) so I don't know
whether the plastic (it was black) was Delrin, or a more easily melted
thermoplastic.  If so -- (lots of) heat applied via the dial shank might
melt them and allow it to be opened without a combination.

        And on at least some of the dials (e.g. S&G), it is possible to
install the dial on the shank, so you go through the whole set, with the
standard "stop on zero" for the forth number and still never get it.
(Though I doubt that many were ever set up with a different "stop on"
number.)  I don't even remember whether the standard form for recording
the safe combination had room for a variable final number, or simply had
a "stop on zero" pre-printed.  (These forms, BTW, were stored in another
safe, up the chain of command from the one for which the number was
being saved.)

        You can (these days) learn a lot about locksmithing from the
web.  But at any previous period, if you have some locks to play with,
you can learn a lot without guidance, if you have mechanical skills and
intuition.

        Enjoy,
                DoN.

--
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 Email: <BPdnichol...@d-and-d.com>   | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
          (too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
           --- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Do you know if it is a 3-number combination or 5?  If 3 numbers, I'd
just try them all, it is probably a lot faster than trying to drill
a good safe, even if you knew the exact spot.

Jon

Most do.
Varies by state.
My locksmith eduction was decades ago, so I don't know how they do it now.

Of course, it's not a perfect world. I've heard of "baddies" slipping in
some how.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
  www.lds.org
.

news:k4v2fc0121n@news6.newsguy.com...
On 10/7/2012 8:14 PM, Stormin Mormon wrote:

So, locksmiths have greater integrity than the rest of us?  And does
becoming a locksmith require an FBI background check to insure
honorable-ity, or what?  I seem to recall "Study at Home to be a
Locksmith" ads in Popular Mechanics - how did they screen students?

Please.

Bob

In a somewhat slightly still free society, locksmiths don't "allow anyone
else" to do this or that. But, we can refrain from teaching lock defeating
skills to others.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
  www.lds.org
.

"Cross-Slide" <3...@centurytel.net>
wrote in message
news:e5c666ee-6e2d-4432-85b4-08f5370a3ea8@googlegroups.com...

Is it unethical for locksmiths to allow anyone else to do things on their
own?
And by the code of ethics, everyone MUST pay the locksmith's hourly rate, or
else?
Is that similar to the code of ethics of magicians, not to reveal the
secrets?

Just curious.

On 10/7/2012 12:13 PM, Ro Grrr wrote:

Ask the police if there is a safe-cracker out of jail that does that
work.  We paid 100$ and it took him 20 minutes and no damage.

On 2012-10-08, Jon Elson <jmel...@wustl.edu> wrote:

        I've not seen a photo of his, nor much of a description other
than "DIEBOLD" and "two-door", but the safes which the Government uses
(at least at army R&D labs, where at least medium classification levels
are common) use combination locks with 100 numbers on the dial, and
three setable numbers, plus a final zero.  And depending on which flavor
of locks were used, you either have to hold the dial at that final zero,
and turn a small central bar and then rotate it a bit more -- and
doing that disturbs the previously set discs, so you have to go through
the full dial operation again to try the next.  And then you have to try
the handle to see whether it really withdrew the bolt -- though you can
probably tell by feel once familiar with the lock.

        Assuming that all three numbers could be any of the 100, that
leaves 1,000,000 combinations to try.  Normally, you are advised to
avoid number near zero (especially on the last one, but assuming that
you avoid 98 through 02, that still leaves 857,375 combinations to try.
(And also consecutive numbers should not be too close to each other,
which reduces the count a bit more, but not really enough. :-)

        Let's assume that my 857,375 count is reasonable, and that it
takes about 30 seconds to dial a combination.  If you have to try every
combination, that calculates to about 297 days of 24 hours a day trials.
Drop it back to 8 hours per day (so you can get other things done), and
that becomes 893 days -- or well on your way to three years. :-)

        And this is not counting some way to keep records of what has
been tried.  I would advise a computer with a toe-operated switch to
increment the numbers -- and with battery backup so you don't lose your
count.

        Since the combination is likely to be anywhere in the range, you
might write a program to generate random numbers, and keep track of
which ones have already been tried.  You might include statistics to
tell you what percentage of the way through the choices you are -- just
to keep you depressed until you are a couple of years into the project.

        It is not quite as easy as holding a cheap combination padlock
in your hand and twiddling while applying strain to the hasp, which is
likely to open it without serious concentration in a few minutes. :-)

        Oh yes -- this is mounted on something the size of a couple of
file cabinets side by side, with thick walls filled with concrete or
asbestos/concrete mix to maximize the insulation during a fire, so you
can't just bring it over to where you sit down -- you have to go to it,
and set up as comfortable a chair as possible which allows you to reach
the dial and  manipulate it for hours at a time.

        You *will* miss-dial some, so you need a way to tell the
computer to try that one again (perhaps just by not tapping your toe on
the switch) -- *if* you realize that you have misdialed it.  Towards the
end of the seventh hour, you probably won't. :-)

        Enjoy,
                DoN.

--
                  Remove oil spill source from e-mail
 Email: <BPdnichol...@d-and-d.com>   | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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           --- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Well, Richard Feynman was able to crack the safes at Los Alamos
in a couple hours, and I assume they were of similar specifications.
Not clear what tricks he used.

Some of these have all sorts of suicide devices in them, such as
tempered glass plates that shatter when you drill in the wrong place,
and totally jam the works.  You then have to saw the entire door in
half to get it open.

Jon

On 10/8/2012 8:54 PM, Jon Elson wrote:

according to Feynman's book, these were padlocks, presumably the early
Sargent and Greenleaf type - the later ones had some anti-tamper
features but the earlier ones could be felt out, at least for a few
numbers, limiting what you had to try.  go to a surplus store and buy a
bag of these locks, they are deprecated now.

--
For a $5 dollar donation today you get credit for $10 with HIM

On 10/08/2012 12:27 PM, Bruce L. Bergman (munged human readable) wrote:

No, they are rated on how long it takes an _expert_team_ with full
knowledge of the internal construction and an assortment of tools
(common hand tools for TL-15, add abrasive cutting wheels and power saws
for TL-30) to gain entry.  And, the time is "net working time," i.e.,
when the tool comes off the safe, the clock stops.

You can view a video of the testing of a Meilink Gibraltar TL-30 safe
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtbGUbeM860 .

--
Bob Nichols         AT comcast.net I am "RNichols42"

Read Feynman's books - they are worth the time.

He noted the last number from inspecting open safes (actually "secure
file cabinets" IIRC). It was a flaw in the design.

He found (IIRC without re-reading the book right now) that the numbers
were not overly precise - so 100 numbers might really be 25-33 if
running trials. This is a pretty common flaw of 100 number safe dials,
at least on the lower end. If the spec says 100 numbers, they put on 100
numbers, but if the numbers are all off by one or two, the safe still
opens...

He pointed both of these flaws out to security, which rather than fixing
them, responded in typical idiotic fashion - at least until they needed
him.

He also used the same tricks that any password cracker uses now - common
numbers people might choose - anniversaries, children's birthdays,
numbers scribbled on the desk drawers, etc.

And if he cracked one in 20 minutes, he made sure to read something for
another couple of hours before opening the office door, so as to not
make it look too easy.

For a safe you actually own, the correct way to computerize the process
would be a robot dial-spinner - doesn't need to sleep and won't fudge up
the numbers if it's built right. But you do need to know the correct
directions to spin for that model of safe (no matter what you are
using.) Just the thing for a spare servo (or stepper) motor and
controller, plus a linear actuator or something for the handle part. Let
it grind away until it pops, and figure some way to note when it pops so
you save the right numbers. The you could re-run trials to see how wide
the band of numbers that work is to figure what the center numbers (ie,
the real combination) should be.

If making new combination locks now I suppose you might include some
means of noting too much dial twiddling, but I guess the serious safes
all went to time locks to deal with that problem anyway. Any safe you
can pick up (with a forklift, if needed) is ultimately not all that
serious, is it?

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

On 2012-10-09, Jon Elson <el...@pico-systems.com> wrote:

        Among other things -- he knew the mindset of the individual
people who set the combinations, so the number of tries was
significantly reduced.

        Things like a physicist being likely to use physical constants
as combinations, mathemeticians likely to use "pi" and "e" as
combinations, auto license plate numbers, dates of birth or marriage,
names of spouses, kids, and pets and similar -- and they were not
required to change them as often as later.

        I know that we had to change them about every six months, and
were in the habit of using words -- converted todigits by the telephone
dial (ignoring 'Q' and 'Z').  There was always a phone near the safes,
so this was a convenient way to do it.

        Once, decades ago now, a sequence of three security file
cabinets in one room was set to "howcum nobody toldme" or 46-92-86-(0),
66-26-39-(0), and 83-63-63-(0).  This was making fun of a common phrase
of one particular co-worker. :-)

        Since we had nothing above "Secret", certainly not "Top Secret"
or any of the crypto or nuclear secrets (at least in our area) and most
was just "Confidential" or "FOUO" (For Official Use Only), we did not
have anything this Draconian.

        The closest to this is a couple of data encryption devices which
I got at a hamfest (with the Medco keys for the locks), which was set up
so you needed both keys to get to the bolts which kept in in the rather
thick metal housing (one key for normal use, and the other for loading
new encryption keys into it), and you had to spend a long time taking
out a long fine-threaded screw.  The first thing that happens as you
start to back that screw out is a metal arm is lowered to short out the
power to the CMOS RAM chip which kept the keys, so even if you got
into it, you could not read the keys (and they would normally be changed
in a week anyway. :-)

BTW -- for setting the encryption keys on a Wi-Fi device, I will type a
        fairly long paragraph, and then take a MD5 checksum of the
        paragraph and use *that* as the key.  It is a good match for the
        maximum length of key the devices will accept.  As an example,
        let me take *this* paragraph up to the colon:

        And it comes out with "eab0d091f3856c6253db169628dac12f" as the
        key.

        And for an example of how little a change makes how big a
        change, my editor in the test above always adds a newline to the
        end of the last line so I went into it to take off that with a
        different editor, and got "fa9482e83bfad920695d9022a561cc2a"

        And convert it to a MS-DOS format (CR & LF at the end of each
        line) and it becomes: "76c2b9fccab610d5afa16ba685918b30".

        Unix uses only a LF (line-feed) (which it calls a "newline"
        character at the end of each line, and older MacOS (pre OS-X
        which is really unix with a fancy GUI over it) used only a CR
        (Carriage Return) at the end of each line.

        However, the changes don't matter, since you generate it *once*,
        and then type it into each system that needs it.

        Enjoy,
                DoN.

--
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           --- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 10/7/2012 9:13 AM, Ro Grrr wrote:

Here's a technique for opening a safe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dxFHc5e9ik