Code breaking

My wife came home from work with four combination padlocks that the number combination had been lost, in the hope we could work the combinations out and get them to work. On also had a stuck number ring that wasn't moving at all.

I guessed one of these black ones in about a minute - it probably wasn't far from its open pattern, the rest took a little longer. A further one was just in less than five minutes by rotating the numbers randomly while applying pressure, the last two took a brute force approach of trying every number until I guessed the correct pattern - even then less than 15 minutes.

I reset them all to 007, as that was easy to remember and explained how to change the combination to something else less obvious. I put a drop of oil on them, and they are now all turning freely - even the one with a stuck cylinder.

They are sadly not very secure, you can, under ideal circumstances and with a paper clip, work the combination out in a few second. Even just trying every number in turn takes at the most 15 minutes, though you can be far quicker as I proved and do it less than one minute if you are lucky.

Anyhow they have been saved from going to the council tip - and they can be used in the gardens again - though it's more security theatre than actual security as they are trivial to defeat.

Today's back blip are the first two to be defeated, with an Ilford mono-filter applied.