Making the 5-pin Medeco on a drop safe even more hellish!

[fjardeson]

(Disclaimer) this shouldn't be advanced since it isn't picking or bypass, but enhancing security...


I have a drop safe in my recording studio that the clients drop their rent checks into. I believe that one of the nastiest thing you can do with a Medeco (or for that matter, any decent cam lock) is...

...set the cam so turning the key takes a bit of torque. Kinda like the dialing torque setting on an S&G combination lock. Medeco keys are pretty tough, so if you get the tension right it shouldn't endanger the key.

But it totally screws up feedback from your tension wrench, even if you have a fancy sprung one.

Anyone heard of this kind of thing? (Obviously it won't work with doors/containers where you can apply a prybar to bend the cam loose, but if your container is subject to that attack, why are you wasting a Medeco on it?)

[Abus]

Agreed about cam tension, though i'd say that it applies to many other locks as well, from tubular to cheap wafer.

[maintenanceguy]

My father does a lot of metal work. Several years ago, he built a gun safe out of 1/4" plate. I was a teenager and was into lockpicking so he knew that a regular lock wouldn't offer much protection. He built the door with a custom built bolt mechanism operated by a medeco mortise cylinder.

Then he welded a hood over the cylinder so you had to reach your key up from underneath and insert it by feel since you couldn't see the keyhole without lying on the floor and looking up. And you really couldn't' get any sort of tool around the cylinder to wrench it out.

picture something like this:

[maxxed]

Locks that are hard to turn or that bind at the same point that the plug rotation is stopped by the pins can slow a picker. Most pickers usually attempt pick a lock rotating to the right. If you allowed the plug to rotate enough so that it felt good turning right the lock could be picked and still not open because it needs to turn left. You can do this by changing the cam stop and cutting away the edge a little.

[raimundo]

Sounds like he dosent want you getting in, watch out, he may have a spring loaded handcuff up in there
So how long did it take you?

[bumber]

So how long did it take you?

Geeze Ray not everyone here is an addict....wait, ya we are
So I bet it took no longer than 10mins.

[Abus]

Clever of your dad to do that on the safe.

I've seen similar things done with padlocks, where the shackle didn't allow the lock to move to any easy to get at position. On something like a Master lock, you could probably just pick it anyway, or whatever, but the one I played with was an Abloy classic, and it took absolutely forever to visualize where the disks were, etc.

On a relatively regular lock, I've resorted to impressioning in those situations, since you don't really need to feel or think about what's happening inside the lock