Jiri’s Notepad

Donald Eastlake: ”

I’ve never seen such a ridiculously overhyped teaser article about a very simple 150 year old weakness. … If you have an individual key, key blanks, and access to a lock, you can cut trial keys. Assume 5 pins and 10 level. You take a blank and pick a pin. You cut the other 4 places the same as your working key and, for the pin you picked, try the 9 other levels. (This only takes one key blank as you can start with the highest cut and keep going down with your key cutting machine or a file.) If you find some other level of cut that opens the lock, you have found the master cut for that pin. Do this for each of the 5 pins and you now know all the master cuts having used up 5 blanks and making 45 trials. In fact, you can stop as soon as you find the master cut so on average, it would be 22.5 trials. … This weakness has been well know for 150 years but, so what? If you are skilled enough and/or have the right equipment, its faster to pick the lock anyway

Sometimes I get thinking about what would I do if suddenly there were no computers (think aliens EMPing the earth and I would have to get a manual job. Maybe I could become a locksmith …