Hopefully some couriers will arrive with desperately needed stock today! (We’ve now run out of our most popular security upgrade completely!)

Whether you are locked out in an emergency, or just need a lock changed tomorrow, give us a call.

With a layer of ice under 6″ of snow, conditions are treacherous, and even 4×4’s are struggling. Due to our rural location, and the lack of ploughing and gritting, we have no hope of reaching a main road. Even worse, we have had only two postal deliveries and two courier deliveries in the last 14 days, meaning that we have literally run out of the slip-resistant security upgrade nightlatches that are currently such a popular choice.

If you need a job doing, please still give us a call, as we can either schedule the work for once the roads clear, or help find someone else reliable to help you.

Stay safe out there.

If you are interested in having a professional security review, or even secure area penetration testing (where we, with your permission, come and try to break in) then please contact us on 0845 355 0945, or by email at your leisure.

And it doesn’t need to be your fertiliser store - we test and audit everything from homes to hi-tech businesses!

A Chinese woman used plastic surgery to fool a biometric fingerprint scanner. The appropriately named Lin Rong was arrested in Japan for being an illegal immigrant. Police report that she had swapped skin patches from her thumb and index finger to the opposite hand!

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/198634-Fake-fingerprint-Chinese-woman-fools-Japan-controls has a little more detail.

This made me think, as it does. The two most common things I do, as a locksmith, is fake a key (by picking the lock, decoding it, impressioning, etc.) and revoke a key (changing a lock, re-levering a pack, re-pinning a cylinder, etc.)

This woman revoked her biometric keys, in order to present a new set to the border controls, where they take a copy of the fingerprints of every foreigner that enters their country. This is done because you cannot revoke such biometric keys easily. And this is, as I have said before, the biggest issue with biometric security.

If she had simply used latex paint to do this, she would have been fine, and not required such surgery. But what if she had done that and used your fingerprint? There is no way you can then change your “keys” to a new set, meaning that when you go to Japan, you’d find access denied. This would baffle everyone, especially if, like me, you are a man! However, it would still require someone there with the ability to override the system, which there may not be. And, the first person to present your keys would have already long since left.

I’m pretty sure you would miss your connecting flight…

Today I received another keysafe. This unit is branded Asec, and also some are branded Burton. At first glance, it looks like the high security Supra keysafe unit, but with a rounded base. Retailing for about half the price, this unit is clearly a direct copy, but made in China rather than the USA. The code setting is nearly the same, the code entry, opening and reset are the same, as is the rubber weather cover design. Even the mounting holes are exactly the same, barring one additional one.

All they left out was the security!

This cheap Chinese copy can be opened without a trace in seconds, with barely any practise. It is, almost unbelievably, easier to open than the Sterling keysafe, itself an insecure joke. And, should someone be inept enough to be unable to open it, they can fairly easily prise it from the wall, due to the 2 rawlplug fixings.

Please, save yourself a fortune in insurance rises and/or the nightmare of an insurance non-payout, and don’t buy this cheap copy keysafe.

Discreet Security *only* recommend and install the genuine Supra/GE keysafe range seen at http://www.keysafe.co.uk/ . Don’t be a fool.

Closer to home, I went last week to a church who had been targeted. The big old and impressive lock on the vestry door had been opened, and my investigation revealed it was picked with wires. A few hundred pounds in cash was taken. Hardly worth it - robbing a church? If there is a god, and a hell, then those criminals will really regret that choice!

We hope to prevent the need for divine retribution, though. The new security system, carefully designed and chosen to be in keeping with the very old and beautiful wood and stone, should keep anyone unauthorised out for a very long time.

Very nicely done, they only messed up in a few places.

Normally when you get a phishing attempt, from “ebay” or whoever, the fastest way to tell is to hover on the URL and see that it really links to “www.scammerhome.net”. This one avoids that, by using a cleverly crafted ebay “About me” page.

You can see it live at:
http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=Inssommia&JBR_W0QQitemZ26036QQssPage36QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdViewItem&item=28011654654

DO NOT TYPE YOUR real DETAILS IN! Make something up. Take a look at the top bar of the browser page, and then do a ‘hard refresh’ (Ctrl-F5 in Firefox) and watch the slightly freaky way the page reloads.

It’s been very neatly done using a set of images and looking at the source, there is no javascript used at all!

The log-in (enter fake details) takes you to an ebay themed page, where they forgot to re-write the URL to ebay - it goes to http://plymouth.rtcubed.net/.download/secure/ which tries to get you to download some file with the name referenced in the email.

If anyone wants to take a look and report back what the payload is, I’d be interested.

(Bonus points for anyone who knows what the Google search you can still see was about!)

For me, highlights included the talk about breaking the key control on the EVVA MCS, possibly the world’s most secure magnetic lock, for less than the cost of one of the locks, and the use of a rapid prototyping machine to create a physical plastic copy of the Dutch & German police handcuffs. (If you know what this means, you can get the STL file from http://ke.y.nu and then 3D print your own!)

I gave my talk on British lever locks, which was well received, and a Dutch locksmith did a short hands-on picking session to demonstrate just how insecure the local 4 lever locks are. Ray gave his lecture and hands-on about handcuffs, which is always very popular, whilst many others learned that the basic first level of home security, the 5 pin cylinder lock, was, for the cheaper locks, not very secure at all.

Most mind-blowing, however, was the impressioning championship won by Jos. Impressioning is the art of making a key to an unknown lock. This is tricky but once you know how, do-able. It took me 63 minutes, and only half the competitors finished within the hour time limit. The winner, however, came in with a time of just 87 seconds! Put into context, that’s about 12.5 seconds per cut depth! To put it another way, once set up, I take about half that time to copy a key on my key machine, whilst Jos was using a hand file and did not know the key cuts, only the lock. You can see the video at BlackBag.

So, a great time was had by all. There were also some private learning sessions, covering various things, which I will not be mentioning here. But if you gave them, thanks! We all learned a lot.

Packed full of... stuff

A family of wasps had built a home inside it, out of clay!

The door that required a closer mechanism, to firmly lock the door for security, but also to reduce the thunderous impact of the extremely heavy, 300+ year old oak, was also rather large. Drilling the fixing holes was a careful and long operation, with drill bit clearance required every few centimetres, and lifting the door to work on the hinges required a jack more often used for off-road vehicles!

The selected high quality LCN door closers are used in top end applications due to the high resistance to wear, good duty cycle, longevity and leak resistance (a feature often overlooked on cheaper hydraulic closers) as well as the obvious need for firm and controlled latching.

Work is not quite yet finished, however. The wear showing on the hinges has dropped the door a few critical millimetres over many, many years, and so the hinges will have to be shimmed with specially made washers. Sadly, typical off-the-shelf hinge packers are rather smaller than the 32mm O.D., 22mm I.D. required, so some lathe time is still required.

Even without these additions, however, the door still closes perfectly, regardless of opening angle, while the backcheck feature prevents the door or wall of this Grade 1 listed building being damaged.