Safes are designed specifically to be impenetrable — that’s kind of the whole point.That’s great when you need to protect something, but it is a real problem when you forget the combination to your safe or when a safe’s combination becomes lost to history.In such situations, Charles McNall’s safe-cracking autodialer device can help.
This is a device, controlled by an Arduino UNO Rev3, that can attach to a traditional safe that has a dial combination lock and perform a brute-force procedure in order to find the combination.In simple terms, it tries every permutation of digits until it happens to stumble across the correct combination for that safe.The Arduino spins the dial using a stepper motor and there is an OLED screen for status information, with buttons for control.
The device attaches to the safe using magnetic mounts and it grabs the dial with a 3D-printed chuck.There is also a magnetic clutch, which is important because it slips when the lock mechanism falls into place on a successful combination entry.That prevents the autodialer from continuing on after it finds the correct combination.
This can attempt combinations at a very fast rate, but it could still take several days or even weeks to succeed if it has to try every single permutation.Luckily, it is possible to narrow down the possibilities quite a lot.That depends on the safe model, but design quirks tend to eliminate specific number ranges and can help the cracker find one or two dials through feel alone before moving to brute-forcing.
McNall plans to live stream a cracking attempt soon, so stay tuned for that.Until then, you can check out McNail’s code on GitHub.
