- This is Mark Tobias. I'm in Vancouver, Canada
today with Terry Whin-Yates. He's one of the top
locksmiths in Western Canada and I thought it was instructive. He's been working on safes analysis and we're gonna show
very briefly here today a very, very popular fire
safe that's made by Sentry in the United States. It's probably the most
popular consumer safe in the country. The point of this video is to show how easy these are to
open, as far as burglary. This is not a burglary-rated safe. It's strictly a fire safe, but it looks like it's a secure safe. It is not. It'll protect your valuables in a fire, but it's not gonna protect your valuables if they're stolen. So Terry, briefly describe this safe. First of all, where'd you get it? - I went to the local Walmart,
Home Depot, or Costco. - Okay, so they all carry them. - They all carry this
brand, this style of safe. - Just like in America. - Yes. - Okay. And what did this cost? - This cost me 298 Canadian dollars. - Okay, so that's roughly
equivalent to American, we have a little better exchange rate-- - About 50 dollars US. - Yeah, right! (both laugh) Okay, what's this safe constructed of? - You know, it's a fire safe,
it's not a burglary safe. It has, this one's metal-clad. Sometimes they're
plastic, this one's metal, and has the fire retardant
or whatever it is that's inside to keep the
papers from charring or burning. - [Mark] Okay, so and how heavy is this? - I don't know, I think
it's about what, 150-- - [Mark] Yeah, 150 pounds? You think? - 175, empty? Roughly. - Okay, so in your view, you have lock shops all
over Western Canada. You run a lot of guys. Should consumers rely on this safe at all for burglary resistance? - Zero protection against
burglary resistance. - [Mark] When you say
zero, what does that mean? - We open these up-- - Does that mean none? - It means like, okay, it'll
slow down a little kid. They're not meant for, you know, I wouldn't even
put valuable papers in it, let alone, we've seen
customers putting jewelry, putting gold, putting firearms in it. Yes, we do have firearms in Canada, and some people store 'em
in this type of a safe. - So this safe has the same problem that other locks have with magnetics. - Yes, basically it's an
electronic combination safe - Right. - with a solenoid. - Is there a key bypass on this safe? - Not, no, not this particular model, it doesn't have the key bypass. - [Mark] Okay, some there are. - Some there is, but not
this version of the Sentry. - But this is strictly
an electronic keypad. - Totally. - How long is it gonna
take you to open it? - One method will take
me five to 10 seconds. - Okay. - There's other methods. This is my fun, easy way
that I like to show off. - So let's open this. Is it locked now? - Yeah, and I just reset it to one, two, three, four, five. - Okay. - So the safe is functioning. - Okay. And we can see that
this is a four-bolt safe? - Yeah, it's one of the newer
ones, it's got four bolts. - [Mark] Okay. - [Terry] And the back is being removed. - [Mark] And the back has been removed. - [Terry] They have a cover on this. I've taken off the cover. - [Mark] Very briefly,
here is the problem. That angle piece right
there is called a solenoid. And that is a magnetic based
piece of hardware. Correct? - [Terry] Yes. - [Mark] And basically
a solenoid is a coil with a spring, a coil and a pin. - [Terry] Yes. - [Mark] And the pin moves
when the coil is energized by the electronics in the keypad. - [Terry] Mm-hmm - [Mark] Okay. - [Terry] And this one is
on an angle 'cause they had other problems we can talk about. - [Mark] Yes. - [Terry] So this is angled solenoid. - [Mark] Yeah. So if you dropped
the safe before they made it on an angle like we showed on gun safes a couple of years ago, you could basically bounce the spring, move
the pin, open the safe. - [Terry] Could still be
bounced but a little bit harder. - [Mark] Yeah. It's a 150-pounds safe, it's a little tougher. - [Terry] And usually
there's valuables inside. - [Mark] Right. - [Terry] So you're not gonna bounce it. - [Mark] Yeah, okay. So let's
lock this up and open it. - So we will. (keypad beeping) We're gonna lock the safe. Is it locked? Sound like it's locked? It's locked. Now, this is extremely dangerous. - [Mark] Okay, and let's describe this. This is a hockey puck magnet. - This is a rare earth hockey puck magnet. - [Mark] And my readers
have seen that before because other locks can
opened by these same magnets. That's a rare earth magnet, it's basically a 125-pound pull magnet. - For this side. - You can buy a magnet on
the internet for 50 bucks. - Fifteen dollars, I've
seen 'em as low as. - Well, it's going down then. - Yeah, what I'm testing now is how low, how small of a magnet could I use. - Okay. - So this is overkill, totally. - And you wanna really be
careful not to get your fingers between this and any metal. - Any metal whatsoever. Now what I do ... - Put it in the sock. - Put it in the sock. (Terry chuckles) - [Mark] Sounds like a movie. (both chuckle) - [Terry] So I got the
magnet. Now this is locked. - [Mark] Okay, let's
remember where the solanoid-- - Now, the solenoid is exactly here. - [Mark] Yup. - So we put the magnet on. (magnet clicks) (safe clicks) - [Terry] Took a couple of
seconds longer than normal. - [Mark] Yeah. - No damage. - [Mark] No damage. - Done, no sign of entry. - And is there an auto-trail on the safe? - Zero. - With the keypad. - Zero auto-trail. - Even if you air the keypad,
there's no auto-trail. - No auto-trail whatsoever. - Okay, so the bottom line is, this is not a secure safe
for storing valuables. End of story. - Totally. - And do you open a lot
of these commercially? - This is the most popular safe right now, this version and the earlier version, is the most popular safe
that we open right now. - Okay, a lot of people buy in. - There's hundreds of these things, and if you look around
here, what do we see? There's like six, seven ... - Yeah. - Sentry safes that we've had to open. - But, okay. And they make a smaller version of this? - Yeah, they have smaller
versions, very similar. - Right. - The only major
difference is the keypads, but they're all different sizes, some large ones, some small ones. I don't know if this is on gun safes, I haven't looked at a gun safe yet. - Are all of these electronic-based, or are some of them mechanically-based with the same solenoid? - So far I've only seen electronic with the combination locks. - Okay, and how many different versions of this Sentry safe have you tested? - This one, we just bought,
and we were just ... We just found this out yesterday. - Okay. - With the new version, this
is brand new out of the box, we were about to show
like six different ways of opening it. - Okay. - And just for the fun of it, we just did this and it opened. - But this is the easiest way? - This is the easiest,
quickest, simplest way. - And what about
compromising the electronics or the keypad? - Wow, it's pretty easy. The smarts is all here. - Okay. - The batteries are here,
the smarts are all external, we remove this, and we can jump, spike, or put in our own keypad
and open the safe. - Okay, so let me ask
you one last question. If you remove this keypad on this safe, is the communications to the solenoid encrypted or is it strictly electric? Or do you know? - From my spiking, it's not encrypted. - When you say spiking,
that's just applying voltage? - Applying power-- - To the solenoid. - To the solenoid. - And that's it? - That's it. - And how difficult is that to do? - It's got four wires, and
I strip off the four wires, I jump them, add power, and the solenoid. - What are the four wires for? 'Cause you'd surely need two wires. - I don't know what
the four wires are for, but I just play with
the wires and it opens. - Okay, so could it take-- - (laughing) Not very sophisticated, I'm not an electrician. I know the earlier Sentries
we spiked all the time has two wires, put them on the
nine-volt battery, it opens. - [Mark] Okay. - This one. - [Mark] Could a kid do this? - If he watches the internet. Or he's semi-literate on
electricity, of course he could. - Is there anything else that consumers ought to know about these safes? I thought it was gonna
fall over, that's why. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. (laughing) Don't put anything
valuable in it at all. - (laughs) Have you talked
to Sentry about this? - No, and again, it was just ... You're the first person
that has seen this. - Okay. - We usually keep a lot
of it kind of secret. You have an interest in this,
so I had to show it off. - Okay. Terry, thank you very much, it's been a pleasure being in Vancouver. - Okay, thank you, welcome, back. - Okay, buddy.
I have one of these, I use it for things I will need after a fire, like ID, insurance, and mortgage info. So the important question for me is Does Fire know how to open one of these with a magnet? Because as long as Fire doesn't see this video, I think I will be OK.
I'm not sure if the safe in the video can be bolted down, but any safe that a burglar can carry isn't secure against theft. I actually keep the keys in my fire safe, because fire lacks manual dexterity.
most of these portable safes are terrible. You can open some just by dropping them at the right angle, or with a bent wire coat hanger. they also don't have a real fire rating, as the company that sells the safe makes the test, then passes it and gives themselves a rating.
If you want an actual safe it needs to be TL-(with a number like 15) rated. That means actual safe crackers with power tools couldn't open it in 15/30/60 minutes. Otherwise you have a box that will keep honest people honest (and may protect against heat).
I got one at a garage sale for $5 because it was missing the keys. (It was unlocked) I used to lock and unlock it with a paper clip.