“Security-by-obscurity,” if viewed rather dismissively by those in information security, remains a cen-
tral tenet of the safe and vault trade. It isn’t easy to learn how safes work or what makes one better than
another, and while the basic techniques and designs are available to those who search persistently enough,
few professionals (on either side of the law) openly discuss the details of safe opening with the unindoctri-
nated. Consequently, it can be difficult for a potential user to judge independently whether a given container
is sufficiently secure for its intended application; that role is left primarily to the safe industry itself (although
standards bodies and the insurance industry have some influence here as well).
For all the reticence surrounding the subject, however, safes and safe locks (and how they are defeated)
are worthy topics of study for students not only of locksmithing but of information security. An unfortunate
side effect of the obscurity of safe and vault technology is the obscurity of tools and techniques that deserve
to be better known and more widely applied to other disciplines. The attack models against which safes
are evaluated, for example, are far more sophisticated than their counterparts in computer science. Many
of the attacks, too, will remind us of similar vulnerabilities in computer systems, in spite of having been
discovered (and countermeasures developed against them) decades earlier.
The mechanical combination locks used to control access to safes and vaults are among the most
interesting and elegant examples of security engineering and design available today. The basic internal
structure of (and user interface to) the modern safe lock long predates computers and networks, and yet a
careful study of these devices reveals a rich history of threats and countermeasures that mimic the familiar
cycles of attacks and patches that irk practitioners of computer and network security.
One of the most striking differences between the physical and information security worlds is the rel-
ative sophistication of the threat models against which mechanical security systems are measured. Perhaps
owing to its long history and relatively stable technological base, the physical security community – and
especially the safe and vault community – generally seeks remarkable precision in defining the expected
capabilities of the adversary and the resources required for a successful attack to occur. Far more than in
computers or networks, security here is recognized to be a tradeoff, and a quantifiable one at that. The
essence of the compromise is time.
1.1 Safe and vault construction
For the purposes of this discussion, a safe or vault is a container designed to resist (or leave evidence of)
unauthorized entry by force. (That is, we are discussing burglary safes. Many consumer products marketed
as “safes” do not actually meet this definition, being intended to resist only very casual pilfering or to protect
contents from fire damage; we do not consider such safes here). The difference between a safe and a vault
is scale; safes are small containers designed to store objects, while vaults are essentially room-sized safes
with features (such as lighting and ventilation) that support human activity.
Many different safe and vault designs are in use, including stand-alone “box like” containers, in-floor
safes, in-wall safes, prefabricated vaults and custom made containers; even a superficial survey would be
beyond the scope of this document. All share certain common characteristics, however.
Normal access to a safe or vault is via a door, which is usually hinged to the container walls. The
door is locked shut by one or more door bolts (comprising the boltwork), which generally are extended
or retracted by an external opening lever, which can only be operated if a lock bolt has been retracted by
the locking mechanism (e.g., after dialing the correct combination). Most modern burglary safes accept a
standard lock package (with an externally-mounted dial), consisting of an internally-mounted lock module
with a small retracting lock bolt designed to mate with the door bolts and handle. See Figure 1. (We will
discuss these locks in more detail later). Some older safes (as well as certain contemporary low security
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