Melbourne security professionals Luke Janke and Jay Davis have introduced the cheapest safe cracker ever invented.
While these machines, which are only sold to the military, are normally worth thousands of dollars, the pair's device only cost $150 to make, and was made with Arduino and 3D printed components, according to The Register.
Electronic materials, including step motors that were previously used in stage lighting, were salvaged for the safe cracker to provide rotation control.
With brute force attacks, the safe cracker is able to get past group two combination locks that ATMs and gun safes use to keep their belongings protected.
"They pretty much use group two locks for everything," Davis said at a conference in Melbourne, adding that most of these locks have close to 10 default combinations that are never changed and would be good to try their invention on first.
The safe cracker is able to do its job by autodialing as many different combinations as possible until it breaches the lock, The Verge reported.
The machine is able to break through locks in less than four days, an improvement over the 14 days it initially took to open safes when it started out. However, pre-loaded default combinations allow the device to crack its target in minutes.
The default combinations can be loaded onto an SD card, which can then be inserted into the Arduino card, according to The Register.
"We're still working on tracking [remaining combinations]," Davis said, "so if you get busted you can run away and come back and try later on- not that we condone that."
