In Europe, there is a large community of sport lockpickers. These people dig pretty deep into locks, and even pick some models that are claimed to be unpickable.
Sometimes they will share their knowledge on hacker conferences, and get people motivated to explore the wonderful world of (high security) locks. There are two lockpick workshops online, downloadable for free at :
was at a lock seminar long ago, with Bill Reed and a few others, and they were discussing when Medeco came out... unpickable-$1,000 to anyone that COULD pick it....
the story was told a guy looked at it, went across the street to the convenience store, bought a popsicle, ate it, and JAMMED the semi wet stick in the lock... waited 20 or so minutes and it turned... they were 'ticked' and had to go change the design of it so it will no longer work. He collected the grand, too
--Shiva-- nuk pu nuk
By the discussion it was a drastic change, and was Medeco.. and they emphasized it will NOT work now.
--Shiva-- nuk pu nuk
That story is BS unless the lock in question was minus it's internals or something.
His reference was specifically to Medeco not to a dimple lock. That it would work with a dimple lock is also highly unlikely. I would submit to you that
99.9% of such stories posted online with no supporting documentation are pure BS. The poster might not know that they are BS but they are anyway.
I worked for Medeco from 1975 until 1990 and never heard of this defeat. It seems on the face of it impractical given the difference between a 1 cut and a 6 cut is .150" and I doubt that a pop sickle stick can be compressed that much without wedging itself firmly in the keyway. It would have to compress that much too since EVERY Medeco combination had in it at least one number 6 cut.
The original Medeco design was intended for an automotive application and that design would not have been susceptible to that attack either.
I can >
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