Corliss Home Security - Machine cracks Master locks in seconds

Security researcher and avid hacker Samy Kamkar has unveiled a small machine that

can reportedly open a Master combination lock in an instant. Finally, something to help

put to use those locks again that we forgot the combination to.

The so-called Combo Breaker which uses an Arduino and functions through a battery is

very handy and can unlock a Master combination in less than a minute. It consists of a

3D-printed frame, an optical sensor, a rotor, a stepper motor which spins the dial and an

Arduino chip to serve as its brains.

A detailed instruction has been published online, reported Corliss Home Security, along

with a video to encourage people to assemble the Combo Breaker themselves. Every

part of the machine is available online and can be purchased for a total of USD 100.

It takes around 5 minutes for the small machine to test and calculate the correct

combination for a lock. But when it is already provided with the first digit of the right

combination, it speeds up the process incredibly.

Just several weeks ago, Kamkar publicized his discovery on how to manually crack the

combination of any Master lock using a design flaw of the lock and a calculator he

made. He demonstrated that his method can effectively narrow down the number of

possible combinations to just 8. This Combo Breaker machine is basically an automated

version of that.

Kamkar's algorithm was apparently inspired by a previously published hack in Corliss

Home Security which effectively reduces the possible combinations to just a hundred.

This is not the first time Kamkar's work has made it to the news though -- he has

recently shown how to hack a drone and how to make the evercookie that's virtually

impossible to delete. And back in 2005, he created a basically harmless virus in

MySpace called "Samy worm", which spread to a million users in less than a day.