How To Crack A Safe, with Jeff Sitar
Keep in mind that he’s doing this entirely BY TOUCH–no drilling, no x-ray machines, no thermic lance, just his fingers. Jeff Sitar is, essentially, the world’s greatest living safecracker. He has won the Lockmaster’s International Safecracking Competition SEVEN times.
| In this video from the Discovery Channel show ‘More Than Human’, they have Jeff set up with 3 safe dials, each of which has a certain object attached to the ends of them (their spindles) which barely touches a post at a specific number on the dial: one dial, the easiest one, |
has a toothpick attached to it, another dial has a post-it note attached to it, and the third, and most difficult one, has a feather attached to it.
The next thing they do is have him try cracking a locked gun safe, which he does in 4 minutes and 57 seconds, and lastly they set him up at a real bank in New Jersey (they won’t say which one) to see if he can crack their vault: 5 minutes and 19 seconds. Cool 
If you would like to know more about safecracking I highly recommend Matt Blaze’s Safecracking for the Computer Scientist, which WILL give you the essentials on how to crack a standard Group 2 mechanical safe lock by touch, aka manipulation, like Jeff Sitar just demonstrated above.
33 responses so far ↓
1 Chris G // Jan 21, 2007 at 8:26 pm
He must have been fun in high school … using his skill to bust into lockers and then stacking them so your books all fell out the next time the door opened.
2 Flatulent One // Jan 21, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Strangely, now that you say that, I feel better knowing I’m not the only one that did that to people (I knew their combos).
3 spankbot // Jan 22, 2007 at 4:45 am
This is why my company only uses digital combos with keyboard entry, and a minimum password of 20 characters – local entry only, no network. No dictionary words/names, etc… following NSA (http://www.nsa.gov/) guidelines for passwords. These types of locks are for n00bs.
4 The Cenobyte // Jan 23, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Spankbot, your company is just silly then. It has been shown time and time again that long complicated passwords make people do two things. The first is write the thing down so now all people have to do is look at the bottom of the keyboard or the like. The other thing they do is make it as simple as possible often doing things like using there mothers and father first and last names together or whatever. Stuff that is really easy to break.
What is the fix you ask? Easy, my company uses the three key system, ie something you know, something you have and something you are. Or in other words, a password, a secureID card (other things with the rotating numbers on them) and a fingerprint. The passwords don’t have to be very complicated (Although we do require one numeric and one non-alphanumeric) because it’s only one other the three systems. And because we not overly picky about what they are or how long they are people don’t write them down and we have found they are often much stronger than when we made people have long ones. If your secureID goes missing all you have to do is all an 800# and they turn it off for you. Easier to tell than if someone has figured out your password being it’s a phyical object and unlike a key it’s hard to copy. I will admit that fingerprints are easy to get and the readers we use are pretty easy to fool, but I hope you get it right the first three times or you are going to be talking to someone with a gun on his hip.
Now it might be easy to get one or even two of those things, but all three of them gets pretty hard.
5 Anonymous // Jul 11, 2007 at 11:13 am
6 Destroyer // Feb 14, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I can crack any safe with just my farts
7 the one // Mar 16, 2008 at 7:52 pm
i poo in safes
8 Anonymous // Mar 29, 2008 at 5:20 pm
wank
9 dj doo // Mar 29, 2008 at 5:21 pm
wank
10 Nothings safe wer i am // Mar 29, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Adt
11 Work Post // May 13, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Jeff Sitar may not have turned his talents to a life of crime but he probably makes plenty of money using this skill for his clients.
12 Anonymous // May 13, 2008 at 1:23 pm
First!
13 Anonymous // May 13, 2008 at 2:01 pm
14 nicolas // May 13, 2008 at 2:02 pm
is it me or does this guy remind you of Steve Irwin?
15 Jack P // May 13, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Oh naive little Cenobyte. I am so much better than you. You are inferior to me. Your company is so silly compared to mine because we don’t have our employees broadcast what their passwords consist of all over the internets.
They do involve something old, something new, something you borrowed from a relative between 6 and 9 marriages removed, something you spin on your index finger, something you stepped in when you were 4, something you ate last night, something you enjoy eating (but no more than 3 times in a fortnight), something that smells like a combination of something #46 and something #92 s.1 IIV cvii, something that used to be purple, and your mom.
16 Cynic // May 14, 2008 at 1:14 am
You’ll see just how great three factor authentication is when I kidnap you, steal your fob, and get your password by cutting off your hand to torture you.
17 Anonymous // May 14, 2008 at 1:08 pm
18 the new shelton wet/dry // May 27, 2008 at 2:30 pm
[...] World safecracking champion takes down bank vault in 5 minutes 19 Seconds [video]. [...]
19 Anonymous // May 30, 2008 at 12:25 am
HAHAHA I love when people think digital vaults and passwords are so much more safe. Well I may not be able to crack a dial safe, but digital ones are easy. Ok a minimum of 20 characters. Well lets see here you can do it the hard way, or easy way. Hard way: Work out all of the possible combos, or hack it, use a reader and within 20 secs-2 mins you have your password and vahwahla its open.
20 Anonymous // May 30, 2008 at 12:32 am
Fingerprint readers are shit. Retnal scanners are the way to go. Thats what I use. All I have to do to bypass a fingerprint scanner is take a #2 lead pencil smash the lead into a powder make finger print dust. Then take that go to your computer, door handle or even better a glass or mcdonalds cup, take the dust brush it on the cup, pick out a decent index or thumb print, take a piece of tape, pick up the dust. Next, take a glove, or the best, hot wax, dip your thumb or index finger in it, then take the tape with the print, and place it on the glove or wax, hold down for 2-3 seconds then remove. The dust outline of the print is left on the glove, or on the wax, the actual print is left in the wax. Then walk up to the scanner place the glove finger, or wax finger tip on the scanner, and Im in. But retnal scanners can be bypassed with a simple photograph of a retna.
21 Anonymous // Jun 7, 2008 at 4:37 am
22 safe cracking // Jun 13, 2008 at 7:42 am
[...] A Safe, with Jeff Sitar Keep in mind that he&39s doing this entirely BY TOUCH–no drilling, no …http://technofart.com/index.php/2007/01/20/world-safecracking-champion-takes-down-bank-vault-in-5-mi…safecracking – definition of safecracking from YourDictionary.comsafecracking definition, words [...]
23 LockBuilder // Jul 10, 2008 at 3:47 am
I know the bank he opened quite well. Over my objections they installed a standard “vault” lock.
If it had the lock on it that the plans called for, none of these techniques work.
The lock called for, which I will not name here, does not allow the fence to ride on the wheel pack. The last number is always zero, no matter what the other six numbers are, and there is no way to “rocker” or split number the combination to decode it because the dialing requires VERY exact dialing.
But most importantly, each try at opening yealds NO information as to which number wasn’t correct because you have to scramble the entire wheel pack to reset the “trigger” for the bar to attempt to enter the slots in the wheel pack.
So far no one has opened the lock specified for that door by manipulation that involved anything other than one time someone got lucky. They were never able to repeat their feat.
However, the decision to use the lock he defeated was chosen because it was VASTLY less expensive than the specified lock.
Like most things in life, you get what you pay for.
LockBuilder
24 Anonymous // Jul 10, 2008 at 5:44 am
wow
25 balls // Aug 21, 2008 at 7:57 pm
alert (’i shagged your mothers’);
26 Burnek // Oct 22, 2008 at 9:01 pm
is he a mutant? xmen? or those hybrid humans of nbc’s “heroes” lol
27 firefly // Jan 4, 2009 at 6:03 am
i found C4 works grate for most safes but not rely for the stuff inside
28 george(DUKE) // Mar 1, 2009 at 12:57 am
my father gets called from banks world wide if theirs a death in the bank. And banks unable to open vault. he has been doing this for years pre tech of today . It never took him over a couple of hours as far back as I can remember without todays tech an tools just him and the safe.
29 Anonymous // Jun 1, 2009 at 1:57 am
Anonymous // May 30, 2008 at 12:32 am
Fingerprint readers are shit.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just cut off thier finger?
30 Lock Boss // Jan 19, 2010 at 7:05 am
I agree with “Anonymous” Rectal scanners are the way forward, the only downside is they need cleaning often as they get quite smelly.
31 leigh // Mar 2, 2010 at 5:01 pm
32 good guy // Mar 11, 2010 at 6:35 pm
i would like to learn this skill please email any good information
33 cat // May 27, 2010 at 4:43 am
I too so can
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