New & improved instructions: 1) Place safe on desk; fill with nuts, bolts and hotel bibles; lock safe. 2) Place valuables in desk drawer.

I have a similar one. Whacking the top with your fist while twisting the knob at the right moment works the same as the drop method. Once you get the hang of it, its faster and easier than punching in the code. Actually the batteries died years ago so this is now the main method of opening

15:40 "This here is an entry level safe." Seems like you should move up to at least a prevent-entry level safe!

Ooooh! My time for a fun story! I recently bought a locked safe for $15 at an estate sale! The guy running the sale said "I don't care if its full of gold and jewlery, I don't want to move the thing!" We'll, a few helping hands and 5 hours of learning how to crack a safe and it was full of someones old coin collection and bars of silver from the 70s!

"Hi, its the lock picking eevblog, with your host, dave!" great stuff 👍

LOL I was going to say you'll be taking over from the Lock Picking Lawyer, but you beat me to it!

Feynman found that many safes at Los Alamos were still set to the default combination of 50-25-50.

I'm using one of these cheap "lockboxes" for storing my firearm, but... I knew about their weaknesses, so I made some modifications to the mechanism and door and bolted the lockbox to the concrete wall. Then, I live in the flat on the 8th floor and the only way inside is good quality safety door, so this is the main line of defense against the outsiders. And there are only adults in out home, so this lockbox is only against visitor's nosy kids or something random like that. It is definitely better than keeping the gun in the bedside cabinet drawer. Also, if you have one or two firearms, there are no specific requirement for a certified safe in our law. But I agree with you about the quality of these things, at least in the as-sold state, without modifications. Of course, I wouldn't even consider one of these lockboxes, if the conditions is different (living in house or on lower floor, kids in house,...) In that case, I would buy a proper, certified safe, even though it is not required by the law.

The 6th way is to insert a rod through the mounting holes on the back and press the code reset button. I've actually done this. This is why it's so important to anchor these cheap safes.

Dave raking the lock open twice to show us that it was not a fluke.

I love the giant locking pins held closed by a plastic bushing on a tiny solenoid shaft. It's like a big plastic wing on a base model Civic.

I found a while ago a cheap safe I picked up can be unlocked simply by turning it upside down !

Dingle arm is the correct engineering terminology for this encabulation.

Listen to this guy 😂 he's sounds like he's a sports commentator the longest horse race ever 😂

1-2-3-4 I’ve got the same combination on my luggage!

This is the safe type that provides nominal safety for simple hotel/motel rooms, needed to reach a middling stars rating. It works against opportunistic housekeepers and that's good enough.

EEVLOG, where "click out of one..." is the sound of the whole safe being slammed to the floor upside down. What an awesome Aussie way to do it. Bravo!

Bwahaha! it's like an Aussie lock picking lawyer... I love it. 😂Please do more of these!

Haha, I love your terminology and techniques. The general public needs to see this video.👍🤠

I have one of a similar price and size, but mine is much heavier, especially on the right side, it has a glass in the door and a keypad with a few buttons but most times I just press the same button several times so that it warms up the milk for my breakfast. Maybe someone else has already mentioned this model because I haven't read the other comments since it's 4:45 am and I want to go to bed ;-)

Yes, I inspect all the best safes. :D Thanks Dave for all you do!!

I made a stronger safe in appy school, using scrap steel from the welding shop. Cut pieces of 6mm steel plate, and welded them together to make the cabinet, and similar steel for the door. Put on a cheapish Ezlett wafer lock, but it is hard to copy the keys, simply because they are so sloppy, and thus tend to need hand finishing to get the copy to work. Used it for years as a basic money, document and key safe. A lot better than the junk electronic ones, which you can open with nothing more than a few paper clips, or even just a big screwdriver. Incidentally the solid steel safe is not resistant to a plasma cutter, you need to have layered protection for that, and there to make matters worse for the one breaking in they put tool steel rods in the cement fill they use between the layers, to shatter diamond bits as well. You need to mount them 3 sides to the wall and floor to make them more resistant, as thieves come these days with big crowbars, and the fixings supplied with the safes are laughable. I mounted using M10 rawlbolts for the 3 sides, and that was going to make it hard to break it out, going into concrete on 2 sides and solid brick the third. Incidentally that CMI is the only one of the 2 you have that actually is rated to store firearms, the dumpster one is not even rated for anything, not fire resistant, or even rated for anything more that $100 in contents.

I have a very similar one. I never intended it to keep out burglars, but just wanted it to hold some of the important paperwork that you collect over the years and need to keep just in case someone asks for them (diploma's, deeds from the notary, insurance papers...) and want to protect a bit extra against fire. As far as I was concerned, the lock was not really required as long as the door can be kept close.

Thinking about it, this type of safe will be the perfect box for my 1.8kVA isolation transformer.

What a fantastic lock picking lawyer episode. 🤣 Thanks for the upload Dave!

Thanks for this video! Was going to buy one of these safes, and was looking to buy a cheap hardware store one. Now I won't.

Take off LaGard keypad 1 sec. Drill 1/8th inch hole into lockbody through spindle hole 10 sec. Inject 500 cc contact fluid into lockbody with a syringe 10. sec, Attach 9V battery (2 in line are better) 5 sec. Turn spindle into opening position with a hex key. OPENS all LaGard's, some S&Gs, Wittkopp Swingbolt 1000, M-Lock Roto/Swing/Straight. All Technosicurezza and the KABA SL 525 ATM Locks-

That's far worse internally than the one I had to get open for a local charity shop a few years back after all keys had been lost including the spare. Drilled out the lock then took the replacement safe apart to see how to trip the unlock mechanism and made up a bent-wire tool to do it. The new one was slightly different so I couldn't just swap the door and the fixing holes were different. Then while clearing up guess what? I found someone had put the spare key for the old safe in the box of the new one...

What surprised me when I took apart a cheap safe was that they put the brains of the electronic lock on the *outside* of the door, protected only by a flimsy plastic housing. So, the wires going to the solenoid, reset button and battery were *already* threaded through to the front; you would just have to smash the plastic off to access them. But, actually, exterior electronics make sense from a manufacturing cost point of view when the safe already has multiple other more easily exploitable weaknesses.

Wow, that was quite surprising, very informative.

Thanks for the tear down. These are typical hotel room safes (in Bali etc). I remember hearing that you could wack the top with a bottle or can of coke to get the same result.

I'd like to think this is the very first part of a series where Dave eventually cracks into bank vaults.

I really want “dingle arm” to be the actual name for that part.

Your better off leaving a stack of money on top of a desk. That safe is only good enough to keep the honest people out! Great video Dave. If EE doesn't work out, maybe safecracking is in your future... lol

Great video! Thanks for sharing. Nobody can feel safe with that cheap stuff.

Method 6: get a wrench on the handle and turn; with enough leverage the metal plate will deform or dislodge the nylon jobber.

I remember that CMI safe when you locked yourself out and had to plug the keypad cable back in from the outside.

That safe is perfect, would make the best honeypot ever

Great video! Thanks! Reminds me that almost half of the safes I see in hotels are like this. Oh no

These are good as decoy safe. Put a few hundreds bucks worth stuff in there (enough to satisfy your average burglar) and have a loud siren connected with a wireless ultrasound sensor that will act as a switch so that when someone will open the safe the siren will go off and the burglar will start heading on his escape route, leaving alone the stuff you stored in your good and well hidden safe :)

Thanks, Dave. We had one of these safes that wouldn't open. I tried dropping it on the top while turning the handle but it didn't work. After explaining how the solenoid worked, I realised I was turning the handle too hard and jamming it in the locked position. I turned the handle gently and two drops later, it popped open.

Amazing video!! Thank you!!

That same safe, in Europe, you wouldn't have to turn it upside down because they are already upside down compared to Australia!

I guess the previous owner replaced the batteries and didn't know it would reset the code to factory. So they dumped the "broken" safe.

considering it's just a plastic piece holding back the locking slide mechanism, i'd imagine if you got good leverage on the turning knob you can just force it open by breaking/deforming the nylon piece. You should try that! I'd imagine just grabbing on to the knob (or pulling off the knob fascia to expose the actual turning mechanism) with some vicegrips or a decent pair of pliers you can just force the safe open as the plastic bit gets forced into the center gap of the metal slide or breaks (I also wouldn't be surprised if the metal slide bends instead as it looks like cheap metal).

I'm constantly telling people not to buy cheap safes and this video is the exact reason why 😉👍

Wow very safe!

The old saying, "You get what you pay for". :-)

Dude is shook about this build quality. If he only knew all are flawed if you just gotta know it's exploits

I love it. "I'm not the Lock Picking Lawyer". Lol

nice Video! And i learned a new Australian Word: Glory to the "Dingel-Arm" 😂

When I was a manager at a movie theatre we had a few safes and the smallest was a chubb. It held the cash tills for box office and concessions etc. I was easily a ton. The door was an inch and half sold steel. It was crazy strong. I sat on the floor on an office carpet. One day they wanted to be stacked on another even bigger safe. They had to get a special forklift machine to move it. Crazy

Thank you so much!

Banging hard on the top with a rubber mallet causes most cheap safes to open. TeaBagging also works depending on knacker size and weight.

The unfortunate irony is that these safes are in all likelihood worse than no safe. When going through a house/business, the presence of a safe is a big neon sign pointing to the valuables, and if that safe is easy to get into, you may as well save your 99 dollarydoos and put a map to your valuables in the hallway. Would be better off just including the valuables in all the other crap, at least then ir requires a lengthy search or taking the whole lot with them.

Even most heavier safes these days use thin steel for the walls. It's usually just gypsum board sandwiched between pieces of thin sheet metal.

I find that within the 25 seconds they have before the alarm goes off, it's a bit hard to find the safe, open the door, and get out! That's if they come via the front door. any other entry will trigger the alarm instantly. I would remove the Key link, and with luck they would spend the 20s trying to crack the key lock 🙂 And of course the 190dB sounder that's about 1m above the safe also gives them something else to distract them. Got to keep your weekly Gov pension check some where.

I actually use one of these cheap safes by my door for parcels but i have modified mine with a seperate solonoid bolt wired to a relay i can trigger. You can make these more secure by bolting these down, adding a better spring on the solonoid and filling the keyway with epoxy. Just dont forget the code or get flat batteries 😂 Never store anything valuable in one of these ! I see them more as a delay box 😁

While looking through any one of the 4 holes on the bottom, shine a flashlight through a second hole while driving one of Grandma's knitting needles to the reset button....BAM!

There was one of these installed in a built in wardrobe at a property I bought to rent out... Bolted to the wall so we couldn't drop it or access anything from the back. Batteries were flat. Picked it in about 2 minutes.... And it was the first real lock I ever picked about 2 weeks after getting my lock picks. We left it locked open with no batteries installed, and basic instructions to use it. As far as we know, zero tenants have used it since I opened it. Probably for the best.

For those interested in acquiring safes, though, do keep this in mind before you waste your money on crap: it doesn't matter how sophisticated the lock is, any safe that hides naively behind a painting or is in some way easy to find or bump into, is crap, as it can always be easily opened with the _gun-to-the-head_ master key. Bulky safes with locks are only safely closed when no one's around (e.g., in a business building, during the night, when no one's there). For personal use, though, the only safes worth having are those that no one even dreams they exist. They don't even need a lock, they just need to be inconspicuous and very hard to find or bump into. A great example of that is a fake electrical plug. Potential thieves never dream that one (or more) of your 20 or 30 plugs contains a stash of jewels or money or whatever. Regular objects can also be turned into safes. But keep in mind you should choose objects that aren't worth stealing. Don't insert hidden containers into your €500 speakers or your beautiful ornate chest, or else potential thieves might take your safes with them. Also keep in mind, thieves might throw things on the ground and find a safe on a fragile object.

The Lock picking Lawyer has fun with that kind on a regular basis.

There's another attack vector that I used on my own safe when I found it locked and thrown in a dumpster. It's slightly better quality than that one you have there, many more security features so you can't get in around the keypad etc. A coathanger pushed through one of the mounting holes or AROUND THE PERIMETER OF THE DOOR, press the reset switch and enter a new code. Really simple.

Clint! hahaha great fun watching

Hey, have fun with these safes. Place a booby trap inside and cheaply mount it in a easy to find location. The thief takes off with it and opens it elsewhere where a tear gas canister goes off leaving the crook crying. An olde friend once told me about a trap they had setup in Vietnam where they were trying to find the mole in the office. They brought in a trapped safe and were actually able to convince the locals who worked in the office that they stored attack plans in the safe at night. As one can guess, the one office worker who was guilty never showed up for work the next day. They were found a few days later in the outskirts of the village with three other Viet cong. Soilders. That claymore made shot order of finding the mole.

Love the video. I laughed through the whole thing. You smacked the top and you could hear it was just sheet metal. I laughed again when the label was peeled back and the holes were there. I got old ham radios and test equipment with thicker metal in it. The big magnet seemed to hold the door better than the latch. It looks like that nylon cap could actually be worn down. If you pry enough force on the lock lever it would just slip over that nylon. Dave is right. If you can carry it, it is not a safe.

"Bumping" is Fonzi's favorite method for fixing jukeboxes and cracking safes! Heyyyyy!

Ive seen some put the led that says access granted, in parallel with the whole solenoid power so you just have to break the led and short to ground itll power the solenoid and open the door.. this way is also a good way not to set off some tamper alarms..

This is the Lock Picking Lawyer and what I have for you today is a top quality safe 😜 BTW just bump the top while turning the lock button...

Bumbing is an universal cure - remember old TV sets?

brilliant !! had a good laugh watching this

Best to talk to a locksmith that does alot of safe openings to get the proper safe for your needs. You could even have him make it harder to get it open by installing hard plate, hardend ball barrings in drill points. They can modify, change or add to re-locker system.

Also if you drill a hole an inch over from the key you can access the plunger. Mine didn’t have keys one 4mm hole is all I needed. After that. All above mentions methods still work as well.

Would it be possible to upcycle this Safe to a thermal chamber or something similar? Ad some insulation to the walls, remove the little nylon lock thing (so you can always open the door by turning the knob) and add some heating/cooling inside?

Cool video! I didn't expect it to be THAT easy to get into one of these. What's your experience with hotel room safes? Usually they exude similar vibes to me 🙂

Dave you now have the Guiness Book record of the fastest safe opener in the world lol Fun fact: the electronic lock in the last safe is actually used on most ATM machines safe, they are really really good, so good keeping stuff safe that there where some models that had am issue and will lock the owner out haha

"This is the EEVblog and what I have for you today...". 🗝😁

Turned the safe upside down. Bumped it whilst turning the lock. Voila... I am the Pink Panther. Thanks bud! p.s. nothing was in my safe... :D

I go metal detecting at rivers and beaches and once found a large Sandleford safe from Bunnings on the riverbed. It was peeled open like a sardine can (2mm thick steel...) and the contents stolen. There were jewelry bags inside so the thieves got something valuable. The thieves had plenty of time to open the safe, as they just picked it up and carried it away from the home/business as it wasn't bolted down! No damage to any of the mounting holes. Don't buy a save from Bunnings. Never buy a safe that has a 'bypass' key. They're almost all easily pickable. Bolt your safe to concrete. Buy something that will resist an angle grinder for at least a few minutes (anything under 6mm is a joke, 12+ recommended).

EEVBlog: Unless you're a top notch professional you're not getting through this thing. LPL: Hold my beer

Those locks on the good safe are the same kind used on many ATM machines, cash dispensers, safes and lockups inside vaults at most banks.

Use one of those cheap as safes as a decoy. Put a remote camera inside it to capture an image of anyone who decides to break in to it.

Keeps honest people honest.

Vocab! We should be calling this locked tin boxes (even if they are made of steel).

Thanks, Dave. I think the ones you often see in hotel rooms are the same. Makes me think twice about leaving passport and wallet behind in one of these ...

I like the two comically big round locking bolts on the cheap one in opposite to the simple one at the real safe.

The serial code starts with EZ. lol, very fitting.

I have a few from a hotel renovation, they're not totally useless. Remove the lock and bolt/weld the cabinets to your farm truck or welding table for cheap toolboxes. Or weld them together for a cabinet. They are higher quality than Stack-On boxes.

Aww, was waiting for the home made dynamite.

"This is the Lockpicking Electronic Engineer and what I have for you today..." Flimsy sheet metal and plastic parts in a lock? C'mon, for crying out loud! Yes, the thing belongs in a trashcan - completely unlike a high end scope. Try again to see if that one was not a Fluke.

hahaha +1 for the dingle arm reference.... Too bad it wasn't a reciprocating dingle arm...

I knew these things were bad, but that's insane!

The locking mechanism of the safe is pretty standard - you see the bolt sticking out of the rectangular body? That is actually a standard safe lock locking mechanism used in basically every quality safe - this is intentional so you can buy ANY safe, and replace the locking mechanism with your desired mechanism and it will fit in there - it's all standard! Your basic safe will have a spinning combination lock - it is settable (you will see a mark off to the side that represents the number in "set" mode) and breaking into one requires a light touch and probably 2-3 hours of an experienced safecracker time to do it - in a quiet environment because it's actually solving a puzzle and requires concentration. An automated safe cracker left to brute force it will take literally days if it has to try all the combinations - it can be sped up if you know a number or two. Note these comination locks typically are 4 digits long. And once you've keyed the last digit in, you have to spin the dial which if correct will engage the bolt and unlock it. Sparrows has a kit featuring a standard dial combination lock with the intent on showing you how to break into it - there are plenty of videos of people trying it and commenting it's a lot harder than it looks for someone without experience - to the point they also include the default combination if you give up. (Though the kit is easily opened in other ways because you're leaning how to manipulate the lock more than the kit being a real safe) So even if your perfect safe comes with a dial combination lock and you wanted a high security one, it's easily replaced. Probably something the supplier of your higher security lock can do in about 5 minutes on your safe.

Yes, this safe has serious issues. But your blanket statement that "if you can carry it, it's not a safe." is a bit specious. Small safes are designed to be installed with appropriate anchor bolts to prevent the burglar from easily removing it.

As a lock picking effficianato it's funny to see you drag pick, slam slam the pins down. Good on ya

This video reminds me of the safe cracking scene from Bad Santa.

The Harbor Freight ad that KZfaq is placing in the bar underneath this video in the smartphone app is hilarious. Got a screenshot of that! Haha!

Dave picking lawyers 😂😂😂

they are actulally very good for ticking theives and keeping your real safe hidden lol.

I went to a popular hardware store and they recommended one like this. I kept allot of cash in it and when I moved address found that all I had to do to open it without the combo was to simply tip it onto it's right side. The latch just slid open.