Squelchtone wrote:I have not read the entire thing yet but did they come to a conclusion how the 4 locks in Georgia were breached?
So we've hit the point of "too long; didn't read all of it"... short answer is that this paper doesn't consider the specific locks in Georgia, but implies that it was probably bolt cutting or freezing.
The longer story is that some while back, the American Powder Company (APC) had four of their storage areas broken into, each of which were secured with two MasterLock 6230's. Being a theft of explosives, there were investigations, filings, reports, etc. Amongst the various things APC did some rather brief experiments about how the 6230's could be destructively bypassed, and (highlights only) concluded that it would take a bit under 3 minutes to dremel through the shackle, about 1 minute to just use a bolt cutter, and about 15 seconds to freeze then shatter the lock. They did some other tests, but they were very perfunctory overall. They concluded that puck-style locks were much better (duh).
The standards for locks security explosives are a bit out of date compared to current best practice (e.g. hidden shackle "puck" locks were only approved in 2011); the ATF wanted to know if APC's experiments were representative/repeatable. So they had one of their employees, Mr. Schonn McNeill, duplicate/extend the experiments.
Mr. McNeill limited himself to things he could repeatably test. Hence he excluded bumping/picking/shimming/etc. since it is hard to repeat (although he acknowledges this shortcoming of his tests). Against exposed shackle locks he tried dremeling, an oxyacetylene torch, and "compression cutting" (aka bolt cutters). Against both exposed shackle and puck-style locks he tried drilling and freezing. His methodology was a compromise between realism, his own knowledge, and repeatability. E.g. the freezing experiments didn't get all of the locks at the same temperature; presumably a real attacker may have similar issues. Also, he wasn't necessarily sophisticated in how he applied the attacks; he didn't know the best places to attack, but again presumably most attackers wouldn't be highly skilled either.
Overall, the cheap exposed-shackle padlocks did pretty poorly. The W-LOK padlock and the Abloy 350-series were the best exposed shackle padlocks, and were very resistant to bolt-cutting, but somewhat vulnerable to dremeling and the torch. They did do better than the other exposed-shackle locks on those attacks for the most part. The puck-locks overall did quite well, but had some issues with drilling (both the MasterLock 6270 and the American A2010 were very vulnerable to drilling; I don't understand how but the Abloy PL975 failed 1 of 5 drilling attempts as well).
The paper concludes that puck locks are generally better than exposed-shackle, and bemoans that there really aren't any good tests for "real-world" security of locks.
Squelchtone wrote:
I really think they should have considered picking, bumping, or an illicit copy of a working key. Master ProSeries 6xxx are not that hard to pick.
Yeah, that is an acknowledge limitation of the study. Unfortunately, picking and bumping do require *some* skill (albeit for many locks not much), so it makes it hard to repeatably test. Honestly, since it only takes 15 seconds to freeze off the lock, a picking test seems overkill.
