A hacker has assembled a robot that opens popular combination locks

In real life, safes and locks are not as easy to open as they show us in the movies. However, there are such simple locks that their opening can even be automated. User Mew463 did just that – he assembled a robot that opens the popular Master combination padlock in the US in less than a minute. Detailed description of the project “l0ckcr4ck3r” user published on GitHub.

Certain types of Master locks are vulnerable to a simple “attack”. If you put pressure on the shackle of the lock and scroll through the combination set knob, you can feel that it becomes harder to move it in one place. After that by simple algorithm you can calculate the first and third number of a three-digit combination, and get a list of eight candidates for the second number.

The robot from Mew463 automates this process by turning the handle with a stepper motor and pushing the bail with a servo. The magnetic encoder determines the position in which the load on the motor increases, and the encoder on the servo signals how much the lock shackle has moved. The process is controlled by the Arduino Nano together with the TMC2208 motor driver.