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How to Hack a Safe

Ah, a man after my own heart. I don't have a running, operating hard drive in mine, but for my home I wanted some of the same protections you describe for my personal back-up drive, family documents, and old yearbooks, genealogy collections etc. I elected to purchase a gun safe from a sporting goods store.

I don't know what they use in the safe like you bought, but I found out that the insulation material for heat and fire protection in larger safes is.... [drum roll, please] gypsum dry wall! So I found an out of the way place in my home, bolted the thing to both the floor and the wall, and then built a snug little closed around if make up of [another drum roll, please] a couple of more layers of gypsum dry wall. By hand crafting the little dog-house or closet jacket around the safe, I was able to disguise the safe to some extent, and squeeze it into a space that will make it difficult for a casual burglar to get the kind of leverage needed to break it loose from the floor and the wall.

I got a good look at the metal where the holes were created at the factory for attaching to walls and floors, and I didn't get the idea that it would be terribly hard to drill an additional hole or enlarge one. My memory is that there is an un-used mounting hold in the back of mine, up against the wall, that would allow me to drill through the wall and run a data line and a power supply line.

If there is a lock smith in your area, you might be able to get some conversation from him on what it takes to drill through. Looking at the video, it appears yours is about the right size to throw in the car and take it to a lock smith's shop and let him get his tools dull doing the entry port for you.
 
If the safe is insulated with gypsum drywall as GRC suggests, it should be pretty easy to drill through.

However, if it's filled with cement, or some other hard abrasive material that's designed to deter drilling by abrading/clogging/dulling any cutting tools, you might consider laser cutting. A lot of CNC & fabrication shops use servo-guided industrial lasers to cut shapes out of metal sheets and other objects. If you could find a CNC laser, they might be able to simply put the safe under the laser and leave it on until it burns through to the inside.

A single 1/4" hole should be sufficient for a USB cable, but you'd have to cut the cable, feed it through, and then splice a new connector on yourself. The same goes for the AC power, or even a CAT5/6 cable.

Whatever you do, try to keep the fireproofing intact by sealing the wires into the holes with fireproof sealant of some kind. Some products that come to mind are fire-brick grout, high temperature silicone, or even plain old portland cement injected into the holes with a pastry bag.
 
Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:
Ah, a man after my own heart........ I elected to purchase a gun safe from a sporting goods store.

........ I found out that the insulation material for heat and fire protection in larger safes is.... [drum roll, please] gypsum dry wall!........ I was able to disguise the safe to some extent, and squeeze it into a space that will make it difficult for a casual burglar to get the kind of leverage needed to break it loose from the floor and the wall.........

If there is a lock smith in your area, you might be able to get some conversation from him on what it takes to drill through. Looking at the video, it appears yours is about the right size to throw in the car and take it to a lock smith's shop and let him get his tools dull doing the entry port for you.
Click to expand...

I love this board!!!! No matter what idea we may come up with, there's always somebody who can help out. I never would have thought about putting a hard drive in a safe, but the idea does have some merits. If only the people who are responsible for running and programming radio stations could be as creative as those folks in the engineering field, there's no telling how enjoyable listening to the radio would be today.
 
triadradionewsman said:
I love this board!!!! No matter what idea we may come up with, there's always somebody who can help out. I never would have thought about putting a hard drive in a safe, but the idea does have some merits. If only the people who are responsible for running and programming radio stations could be as creative as those folks in the engineering field, there's no telling how enjoyable listening to the radio would be today.
Click to expand...

I got into broadcasting more years ago than I am comfortable admitting to, and the original draw for me was a fascination with the hardware and what could we make it do with a little bit of imagination. Back when equipment was made of discrete parts soldered together there was a lot of oxygen in the room for changing how equipment works and what it will do. Even in the technical/engineering side of the business there is less room for "free wheeling thinkers" because much of today hardware is a sealed "black box" as a young engineer explained to me years ago.

But in those days I never missed a chance to visit other radio stations. When Army Reserve sent me off for two weeks of summer field training each year, I fought for permission to drive my own car rather than ride in the back of a "duece-and-a-quater" and I would visit as many stations as I could work into my schedule. Both in engineering and in programming and operations I thrived on finding little innovative things stations were doing. Back then the programming people... (in small markets in particular) has a lot of room for experimentation and customization. If the business climate would permit that kind of free wheeling today, it would be amazing to see what would be happening in our business now that we have computers and color printers and copiers and EVERY station can have mobile audio if nothing more than a cheap cell phone.

But the genie is out of the bottle and we deal with the cards that this day and age deals us. There is not as much room for free wheeling fun and creativity any more.
 
Same issue, different approach ::) This how i solved it:

Main location: Synology 207+ NAS.
Secondary location (which can for example be your home, another station, a friends home, whatever...): Synology 207+

Every night an incremental back-up is made to the secondary location. Very easy to set up and data is fire-, theft-, lighting- and waterproof ;D
But I'll have to say... A safe looks more impressive ;)
 
Thanks to All who provided some great ideas and alternatives.

I'm taking the safe (along with the ideas/options) to the Station owner today and we'll discuss our options.

FWIW, WalMart dropped their price on the safe from ~ $145.00 down to 70 bucks, so she's not into this deal too deep.
 
richard.vanderveen said:
BTW: It always scares me when people think copying data on an external drive is having a safe back-up...
Click to expand...

Yes, there are more sophisticated technologies for "cast iron back-up protection" but for our personal needs at home, and for little small market radio clusters tended to by under-paid overworked technical people, a not-quite-as-safe quick copy over to an external USB drive stored somewhere where a tornado will not blow it away is probably better than no back-up at all.

Getting into the disciple of doing some kind of back up, even if using anemic technology, a back up done every day or every week is at last 20% better that throwing up your hands and saying: "I don't have the budget to back up correctly, so I just won't do it at all."
 
Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:
richard.vanderveen said:
BTW: It always scares me when people think copying data on an external drive is having a safe back-up...
Click to expand...
Yes, there are more sophisticated technologies for "cast iron back-up protection" but for our personal needs at home, and for little small market radio clusters tended to by under-paid overworked technical people, a not-quite-as-safe quick copy over to an external USB drive stored somewhere where a tornado will not blow it away is probably better than no back-up at all.

Getting into the disciple of doing some kind of back up, even if using anemic technology, a back up done every day or every week is at last 20% better that throwing up your hands and saying: "I don't have the budget to back up correctly, so I just won't do it at all."
Click to expand...
No argument here... but I was referring to those who actually believe an external drive will never fail ...
 
spinjector said:
... you might consider laser cutting. A lot of CNC & fabrication shops use servo-guided industrial lasers to cut shapes out of metal sheets and other objects. If you could find a CNC laser, they might be able to simply put the safe under the laser and leave it on until it burns through to the inside.
Click to expand...

You might be hard pressed to find anyone with a CNC laser that is prepared to attempt drilling holes in anything but flat panel steel or ali (that has nothing on the other side of it).
I deal with a place here which does CNC laser cutting - they make instrument panels for me. The supervisor took me through the factory once and gave me a detailed run down on how everything works, what they can and can't do, and how easy it is to toast a $100,000 laser head.
For that reason alone, they're VERY careful about what they cut, how thick it is, whether there is any possibility of the beam reflecting back up into the laser optics etc.
There's no way they'd leave it on until it cuts a hole. The laser has a short duty cycle, it gets VERY hot - and has to be liquid and gas cooled to keep it within the safe operating area.
 
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