I used to rent a storage unit. I lost the key to it, and went to the manager. He came back to the unit with a small battery powered grinder. Cut the padlock's loop through in a few seconds.
Most locks are only good if the attacker doesn't have any tools.
I bought a giant pair of bolt cutters a while back for a use case other than bolt cutting (shark fishing; cut the big hook instead of putting your hand near the mouth).
I never caught any big sharks like I thought, but now my wife runs a restaurant and occasionally employees just don't show up to work and leave things in their lockers. Once in a while it's clear it's to be annoying (locking supplies in their locker).
Never met a padlock or combination lock I couldn't shear through easily. Totally has paid for itself.
Now, for a similar price, you can buy a hydraulic cutter powered by a hand pump. They also come with replaceable jaws so you dont wreck your cutters when attacking a hard lock.
https://www.amazon.com/Lothee-Hydraulic-Cutting-Portable-Han...
And there are powered models too. The 3-foot snippers are long out of date for thieves.
I remember the faghetbouditt of Kryptonite that broke the blades of that exact hydraulic cutter.
Generally speaking, the hasps on employee locks aren't big enough to hold anything truly sturdy... I doubt even the most resistant lock you could put on a typical locker hasp would hold up to the giant 3 foot bolt cutters.
Oh this is about double what I paid. But good to know!
There's quite a few, many hardened locks will bend or mar bolt cutters... we're not taking bolt cutters off of the rigs because they're relatively small but a K12 and a pair of pliers is way more reliable.
> Most locks are only good if the attacker doesn't have any tools.
The Louvre security staff similarly just learned this lesson.
For surprise of tool used the saw vs safe are the best:
https://youtu.be/2guvwQvElA8
The main thing locks do is make it noisy to get in.
To be fair to Sentry Safe, this product is designed to be resistant to fire. A better name for this product would be ‘fire resistant box’ instead of ‘fire safe’ but that’s what they call it for marketing reasons.
A hardened metal safe designed to be resistant to cutting can still be cut through, just not in seconds with a screamer saw (trade name for a metal cutting circular saw)
If you want truly secure, encase your metal box in concrete like John Wick. Access is difficult but security is high :)
> encase your metal box in concrete
FYI, most safes already have a decently thick concrete layer — that’s most of why safes are heavy! (Or, I guess you could say, adding a concrete layer is cheaper than making the steel thicker.)
But they also have a rubber or foam (often styrofoam in cheaper safes) layer, to “smooth out” the force from a sledgehammer, jackhammer, or just dropping the thing out the window.
And a layer of compressible wet(!) sand, to spread out the point stress from a hammer and chisel, impact gun, gunshot, or small explosive configured for concussive force. (The goal here is essentially to replicate the behavior of a bulletproof vest.)
Plus, they often contain a layer to bind and foul and dull (or even break) the teeth of drill bits and reciprocating/chain/band saws. This can be any number of things — low-melting-point plastics, recycled broken glass, etc — but look up “proteus” for a fun read.
If the safe’s designer is clever, just a few materials can serve several of these functions at once. But more is always better. Which is why good safes (and vaults) are so dang thick. It’s not to solve one problem really well; it’s to mitigate N problems acceptably well, for a frighteningly large value of N.
It's fun looking at the machinery of old fashioned bank vaults. Very impressive.
So carefully applied thermite to defeat all of them at once? Probably not directly down to drip into the valuables, but some tangent application.
Even not dripping directly on to the goods, there's not a lot of stuff that you would be interested in getting out of a safe, but you will still be interested in even after being exposed to thermite. The list is basically "precious metals" and not much more, though that is admittedly a valid entry on the list.
In an analog to the somewhat frequent observation on HN that if you don't care whether the code is correct I can make it run arbitrarily quickly, if you don't care if the contents of the safe survive there's a lot of high-energy ways to blast it to smithereens. This is generally not considered a problem to be solved with a safe, though. If you want to prevent "being blasted to smithereens" that you'll need a completely different approach.
so... if i were a suitably evil billionaire, would i be able to shop for a safe protected by a layer of compressed mustard gas, that is released upon attempted breaching?
This would be a Booby Trap and is illegal, so it's not worth it for that chance of going to prison no matter the value in the safe, if you are a billionaire. It would be hard to find someone willing to help you.
Is it still a booby trap if the safe displays a prominent warning, "CAUTION: EMITS DEADLY GAS WHEN DAMAGED"?
Depends on your lawyer.
The law is someone less picky about armed guards, though, so you may just want to pay some thugs to watch your safe.
Gandalf - “But men are better than gates, and no gate will endure against our Enemy if men desert it.”
That's too bad - life would be better if we had a few fewer criminals around.
Is it perhaps called after the movie Screemers ? Some of the combat robots had circular saws, but they used to to cut through people instead of locks.
Unless they have an inductive heater.
Powered by what?
Battery for stealth.
https://youtu.be/VTIWcK14tQE?si=uNNbgWgASpAcgStB
With these locks you do not even need a grinder, just some really small tools that fits in your pocket, for example a "rake".
See https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ (LockPickingLawyer).
To be fair, a lot of people don't have tools.
Just found out my unit was robbed. The thieves ignored the lock and just destroyed the unit's latch which the padlock secured.
There went Uncanny X-Men 94 through 300.
A car jack across the door frame at latch height works to.
That's exactly what I've seen too, either a grinder or just a crow bar.
Aha, a legitimate use for those things!
Saw the same, except it was bolt cutters.