Using a cheap robot, a team of hackers has cracked open a leading-brand combination safe, live on stage in Las Vegas.
The team from SparkFun Electronics was able to open a SentrySafe safe in around 30 minutes.
The robot is able to reduce the number of possible combinations from one million to just 1,000, before quickly and automatically trying the remaining combinations until it breaks in.
After the robot discovered the combination was 51.36.93, the safe popped open – to rapturous applause from the audience of several hundred hackers.
SparkFun’s Nathan Siedle said: “That was one of the scariest things we’ve done. Lots of things can go wrong, and this was a very big audience.
“We’re really happy it opened up.”
A spokeswoman for SentrySafe could not be reached on Friday.
But speaking to Wired magazine earlier this month, when the team demonstrated its method on a smaller safe, a spokeswoman for the safe maker said: “In this environment, the product accomplished what it was designed to do.
“[It] would be realistically very difficult, if not impossible, for the average person to replicate in the field.” -BBC
