Optical Lock Foils Thieves

opticsorg writes "A UK inventor has come up with a way to make what is thought to be an unpickable lock. The Optilock contains a bundle of up to six input optical fibers on one side of the lock barrel and a corresponding number of fibers on the other side. When a special key is inserted into the lock, it connects the fibers in a unique routing pattern opening the lock in a fraction of a second. Light then flows around the circuit until the key is removed and the circuit is broken."

Comments

Define Unpickable

[no longer myself]

The act of picking a lock is to obtain access in an unorthodox way. I suppose one could pick a lock with a stick of dynamite.

Of course the other issue is that it uses light... Light implies electric. Electric locks may not be a "Good Thing" (TM) when your power goes out, or the batteries run down. What if water gets inside? If it's unpickable, then how do you open it in emergency situations when the power goes out?

Perhaps it should read: "Interesting Nift-value Lock" and come with a stick of dynamite in case of emergency.

Locks are like programming languages....

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

There's hundreds of them out there, but only a few practical ones in widespread use. I predict that this one is too expensive for general use. There are already several locks that are exceedingly difficult to pick or create an unauthorized copy. Medico for example. Very difficult to pick and very tight control over blanks.

What ever you do, don't read the artical!

[NickFusion]

Otherwise you might stumble across this information:

Rice says that the only way someone could pick the lock is to duplicate the key. "You could potentially have as many different points as you want on the lock barrel as inputs and outputs," he explained. "Because it is a 3D pathway you are dealing with, you have potentially billions or trillions of combinations depending on how the lock is made. The probability of duplicating the path is very small."

That said, a lot of these fancy locks seem like overkill, especially since in very high security systems, you'd tend to want some kind of human oversight in the loop.

Re:Unpickable, huh?

[rusty0101]

The stories I have heard are that the lock does not engage until the clock is wound up, and the act of it winding down is what unlocks the clock.

Most time locks can only be set a maximum of three of four days.

However I am no expert on timelocks, and accept that I very well may be wrong.

-Rusty

I didn't RTFA, but I have an answer anyway!

[Baron_Yam]

Without RTFA, I think I can explain why 6 inputs can create more than 720 combinations...

You're counting the possible pathways. You've forgotten to count the positionings! Two keys with the same routing pattern with only one input off by a fraction of a millimeter would not open the same lock.

Re:Electronics

[DerekLyons]

Won't there need to be an electronic control system that determines when you have the correct light pattern? Just bypass (or hack) the light-detection system, and you're in.

Protection of those control systems is a long solved problem for time- and other electronic locks. You put the control system *inside* the guarded volume, where bypassing/hacking them requires that you get inside the gaurded volume... Which you can't do unless you've already bypassed/hacked them.