Optical Lock Foils Thieves 156
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."
Define Unpickable (Score:2, Informative)
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.... (Score:5, Informative)
What ever you do, don't read the artical! (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:3, Informative)
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! (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Informative)