In the world of padlocks there is the omnipresent Master Lock combination lock. It’s cheap, doesn’t require a key, and takes a bit of time to brute force. At least it used to take a bit of time to brute force. One rule in the security industry is once a flaw has been discovered in a product it’s only a matter of time until that flaw becomes more severe. A rather intelligent bloke came up with a way to open any Master Lock by trying only eight combinations and wrote a nice calculator for the site:
Master Lock combination padlocks have been known to be vulnerable to an attack that reduces their 64,000 possible combinations down to 100. I’ve devised a new attack for cracking any Master combo lock that simplifies the process and reduces the amount of work down to only 8 combinations.
Use this calculator in conjunction with the instructions below to find the 8 possible combinations for your Master combo lock.
People have been warning others away from Master Lock combination locks for years now but this shows that you really really need to replace them with something better.