Souvenir of Greece

[femurat]

I went to Greece recently and enjoyed their hospitality, excellent food and wonderful places. I really love the Greek islands and sea.
Since I was there I bought some souvenirs, a padlock and a couple of cylinders.
The padlock was nothing special


The TEGASI cylinder was very nice to pick. It's a dimple lock with 10 active pins on two parallel rows.
I had to play with it a few times to get the feel for that particular lock, because the right tension needed to pick it was not easy to find.
Usually I rotate the pick to lift the pins in the opposite direction than tension goes. This time I rotated it the same direction, both the pick and the wrench went CCW, so I had to use very light tension. A lot lighter than usual since the pick was not opposing the wrench rotation.
I noticed the center row was binding first so I picked its five pins, then picked the five on the left row, and then finished the center again. The plug turned and I was happy







Cheers

[sbellios]

I am glad you liked Greece.
There are 3 lock manufacturers in Greece: TEGASI, DOMUS and GEVI.

[femurat]

Hi sbellios,

thanks for pointing out the names of other Greek manufacturer, now I know what to look for next time I'll be there.

Cheers

[raimundo]

tell me about the camera that took those closeups?
excellent photos.

[femurat]

Hi Ray, thanks for the compliments. I took the photos with my phone... a good old samsung galaxy s
I used to grab my gf camera, it makes GREAT pictures, but then it's a pita to download them to the pc, resize, crop and put them on the phone to publish.
Now I just take the picture, maybe crop and resize it directly on the phone with an app called "reduce photo size" and then publish it to imageshack.us

Cheers

[MacGyver101]

tell me about the camera that took those closeups?

I'm going to guess it was a Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000 smartphone.

[femurat]

So while I was browsing an old folder I found these locks pictures I took in Antiparos.
If memories serves well, these two were on a church door, small side door (maybe not in use) and main entrance:





This padlock was on an electricity box:



And these were on the ferryboat I took to go there:





Enjoy

[raimundo]

eh femurat,
look at www.schneier.com and clik on the archives for august 2012
third item from the top is a photo of a shared lock device

then tell me how that works.

[femurat]

Very interesting ray, I've never seen something similar! I'm trying to figure out the shape of the inner L shaped rod... I understand there's a rod that goes up in one of the holes, letting the wheel free to rotate. Can't see how that rod can pass trough the closed padlocks to reach the open one.

Thanks for the link and have a nice day

[femurat]

I think I got it. The rod passes under them, you rotate the lever till it reaches your padlock. THEN you lift it.

[femurat]

And here is my triple post in a row
Sorry but I though the patent of this mechanism worth a link!

Cheers

[Evan]

@raimundo & femurat:

That is most definitely an interesting mechanism, a smaller one using less locks might be a good way to secure shared areas where government. utilities and private owners would need access, yet 16 locks is way too many keys out there and like someone on the Schneier website comments said: It is only as secure as it's weakest locks... Public Safety tend to use high security Knox compatible padlocks but as people have mentioned elsewhere on this site the utility company lock would be a weak link and the private landowner's lock could be anything...

It is definitely a low tech solution to sharing access that is more secure than a chain of padlocks between two poles, however unless the locks used are all of the same security and durability level it is easy to see how the security could be defeated...

~~ Evan

[femurat]

Hi Evan,

You're right, the weakest padlock drags down the entire security level of this setup. An agreement between users about a standard padlock would be ideal.

This mechanism is used to avoid unauthorized access to a car park outside a building, not to protect a house door, so I think it can still be useful, even if it's an almost 40 years old patent.

Cheers