I and my lock.

From the time, we had our laptop stolen in a high end hotel in Delhi, I more or less kept my laptop locked everytime I went out. After I moved to Chennai, I got a laptop alright. But could not get a good lock. I was looking for the standard Kensington lock. Couple of months back when I went to US, I went to the Apple store and picked one up. Felt quite secure.

After coming back from US, I did not use my lock for a while. Last week, I had to travel to Bangalore and I took the lock out. And guess what? I had forgotten the number combination for it. I tried, all my standard combinations I normally use, but no good. Tried all the fancy combinations that otherwise I don't use ever (like my bday, family's birth days etc). Even tried my employee number, parts of my phone number.. No good. Felt quite stupid.

Then what do I do? This is no ordinary lock. But Kensington lock; which does lot of PR that you cannot "break" its locks/chains etc. This is a lock with 4 dials. So even thought of trying all the 9999 combinations. But that was a daunting task. Today finally, I started searching on the net. First looked at the Kensington site, but not much easy help. Then other sites. They are showing standard tricks that they show in movies -- keep turning the knobs, hear for a click, keep turning. And supposedly you can get it. I tried a couple of those things. But nothing was directly applicable. On the internet I found videos that even showed you can pick a lock in a few seconds!! But in my case each dial would click on more than one position. It was not going to be easy This was Kensington, I felt good about myself and the choice I made for the lock; you could not pick this lock so easily. Felt proud!

Then I became desperate. I started thinking! Applied some tricks (mostly click based) I found on the net, and reduced the number of choices to 81 (actually I felt that each knob had three points worth checking 3x3x3x3 = 81). Now, I tried brute force search on this subset of 81 choices. I think the 16th attempt gave me the hit. And viola!! I was literally jumping. And since I was inside my office, none of the students saw me making funny faces! Ah.. Felt relieved. 

Moral of the story -- Don't buy Kensington locks for security (at least the number combination locks). You cannot cut their lock  (they claim that they will pay you the cost of your machine, if you can show them the cut pieces of the lock wire); but I am sure the thieves know more about the combination locks to attempt to cut. They will just pick the lock. (Giving this gyan), Felt like a true hacker!