When doing a quick review of this video prior to publishing, I spotted UA-cam strangely inserting a "this video contains paid promotional content" notice at the start of the clip. I have no idea what that's about, because this channel remains un-sponsored and un-monetized. Let me know with a reply if you see a similar disclaimer like that on this or any other of my videos.
Decades ago I dated a woman who at the time was a branch manager for a large bank in a major city. Periodically, she would be in rotation to respond to a branch at night or the weekend if there was a problem with the ATM. These machines were built like small bank vaults on the inside with the electronics and cash dispenser on top and storage for more money on the bottom. Over a holiday weekend they could have $40K or more in a machine. Mind you, some of these were in some high crime neighborhoods. I asked her if anyone had considered that these bank managers responding to reset or restock a machine might become targets for robbery, especially since there was like ten times the amount a typical bank robber gets in a regular hod up. She told me about the duress combination that worked exactly as you described. It was only a few months later that a couple of employees were held at gunpoint and forced to open the machines. After that they stopped having young women respond by themselves and started sending armed guards to accompany them. A duress code is a good idea, but by then the employee is already a victim and given response times for alarm companies and law enforcement, the criminal is already gone.
In a previous job, the index finger was the "duress" finger for the fingerprint readers. We chose that one, since it would be the finger any malevolent actor would expect someone to use to open the doors.
@@petergerdes1094 True, in this case we didn't have a say in that. It was a hosted environment, and the property owner enforced that. In our locations that we managed, we used single-person mantraps with bullet resistant glass. There was a 10 second delay between cycles, so you could easily hit the "scram" button (a term we borrowed from the nuclear industry) on the other side, that would disable the door behind you. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best we could get the executives to fork over the cash for.
I encountered a duress code at one of my previous jobs, but I'd forgotten all about it until now. I had to enter a code on a keypad to enter the office, and the system had a second, easy-to-remember code (it was a straight line down the keypad) that was the duress code.
RSA tokens had an optional duress mode where if you type in the last pin digit higher (say, 1235 instead of 1234) it triggered duress mode. The credentail would work once, set an alarm off, and disable the token.
Came here to mention this. IIRC, it was adding 1 to the last digit of your PIN, but without carrying. Thus, if your regular PIN was 1999, then your duress PIN was 1990, not 2000.
Had a similar system when i worked at a cash center, but the keycard would not be disabled. It was meant to be a "silent" alarm, so that if for example someone kidnapped a family member and put a listening device on you you'd be able to go in, grab money and leave without alerting the kidnapper that you set off an alarm. There was also a sort of safe word for when someone accidentally put in the duress code to avoid going all in on a false alarm.
At a small company where I worked, we had a duress code on the building alarm. Some people did not understand the word "duress", but didn't want to ask what it meant - they just guessed and used the code in some way. After the second false _duress_ alarm, that feature was eliminated.
Ages ago when my mother was "the girl in front of the safe deposit boxes" at her bank branch, there was a polished stainless barred door inside the vault door when the main door was open. The key was at her desk. The lock on the barred door seemed to work backwards from expectations: Turn right to unlock, turn left to send silent alarm. (There was also an alarm button at her desk, but she'd have had to nearly crawl under her desk to reach it.)
Reminds me a bit of how some prisons have door locks, particularly on doors to the outside, that will deliberately break and become permanently locked shut if you don’t use the key exactly correctly or insert the wrong key Such a feature is what doomed an attempted 1946 escape from Alcatraz where the prisoners had successfully taken the guards hostage and obtained the keys
At a place where I used to work one of the safe rooms had twin combo locks which when moved from 0 would send an alarm to the guard post. Who would respond guns at the ready. Another thing was that most of the combination locks had a lead puck with concentric circles behind the wheel pack to make x-rays difficult. And yes this was in the UK
The Chubb Manifoil Mk4, its predecessors dating back to the Merlin and the newer versions are all very interesting safe locks. If you watch eBay carefully, the Mk8 makes an appearance periodically.
I've never seen a physical duress code, but I've seen digital duress codes at banks. A lot of banks these days use cash recyclers - basically a combination ATM/Safe at each teller station. Many of those systems use a digital duress code in the teller software to both trigger a silent alarm and to automatically dispense a pre-determined amount of cash in the case of a robbery.
This was really interesting, I'm looking forward to the recording of the con talk! A maintenance guy was telling me about a code on a keypad and that it was important to not get sloppy with it, because one of the employees did, and, allegedly, entered the wrong number for the last digit and it did disarm the alarm, but also the cops showed up in the parking lot. This was at a government building, I don't know how correct that was, but it sounds like it could be a style of duress code.
Wow. Yes we have those for push button entry and there are Challenge answers for base sentries to let them know "I'm the right guy but a bad guy has a gun to my head" Let me in, then take over. Never thought about Safe combinations. Very neat and a great idea. Sadly, with AI voices, challenge codes are needed in families as well as business.
The 15 years ago when I was contracting at one of the annexes we are the keypad combination to give us access to the building in addition to our keys a pseudo two-factor authentication because it ran off your pendant an sqa types keep an odd hours we often thought it would be a great idea to have some sort of dress code built in and when we mentioned it to the government guards they thought of being an awesome idea as well for the 0.01% of time it may actually be a situation versus the 99% wear with just improve the morale of the staff. We all know that safety and Security is very high on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. BTW, you, 'O'LAF, now, I am going to BE needing YOUR PiN CODE to authorize cancelling that silent alarm just triggered by that antique safe combination some blue pillpopping psuedo-psycilopsychibin schmo from schmoo, suddenly surmising... FUTHER MUCKING, Therapeutic-Compression-Sox- Holden Cauliflower Field of Dream Weaving Happy New Year 2025 To All!!
There is also the opposite of the duress signal. A so called "All OK" signal. For example, Vanderbilt alarm system has this. This means you must follow a predetermited sequence of disarming the alarm system after putting in your code to disarm, and if that sequence was not followed, the duress alarm would trip. The sequence could be anything, it could be walking to the break room and intentionally trip the motion detector there, and then opening the vault (bolt switch). It could be something other out of the ordinary, like locking the front door after disarming, or opening the second drawer of a specific filing cabinet, or logging into the computer BEFORE opening the vault. This effectively makes the physical environment part of the disarm code for the alarm system, but in such a way it trips a silent alarm if the numeric code is right but not the "physical code". An advantage of this, is that you don't need to tell people that the sequence is part of a duress alarm system, you just tell people, that this sequence must be strictly followed. So they won't feel any anxiety of skipping this sequence when there is a robbery, the robber will of course "force" the teller to just disarm the system and just go directly to vault to unlock, which would "automatically" skip this sequence. Like: 1: Disarm with code 2: Lock front door from inside 3: Go get the code paper with 365 daily codes for this year from the 2nd drawer cabinet. 4: use the daily code along with your personal username/password to logon to the computer 5: open the vault door for daily use If 2, 3 or 4 is skipped before vault is opened, a duress is tripped. The robber, would never know that 2,3,4 prevents a distress call from being made, not even with inside knowledge, because even if he would ask a teller with gun "What happens if you don't logon to the computer first?" she would propably tell "I get fired for not following the exact opening procedure". So by making a daily routine part of the duress alarm, and not telling anybody, you can easily do a system that is pretty much "automatic duress alarm". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another thing you can do, is to make the bolt sensor timed without an actual time lock. Basically, if the vault door is opened anything earlier than 40min before opening hours or later than 10 min after opening hours (opening hours, not closing hours, so there is a 50 min window to open the vault without tripping duress), the duress alarm will be tripped.
My grandmother, perhaps because of her time working in a bank before retirement, made sure when she got her home security system that she had it set up with both an “all clear” code in case the alarm was activated accidentally and a duress code that appears to be an all clear code until the cops show up.
Would seem prudent to put the duress mechanism on the second-to-last code wheel if knowing the final number of the correct combination is a possible factor
I was thinking a dialling sequence that will not result in an opening. You can pretend you are nervous but really looking to dial this duress code. This doesnt retract the bolt. Then you try again with the proper code to not get shot.
That just shifts the goal post. For a story about robbers with insider knowledge, they would just eyeball the second-to-last instead of the last, etc. As with any of these duress systems, insider knowledge can taint it.
Yeah tbh your low-key one of the idols bro, you and mcnally are the two people I watch religiously, and inspired me to turn my life around, can’t believe it worked lol 😂, so thanks bro, big time. Based on Wales in the UK so maybe one day! All power to you and thanks again dude
Cash registers at department stores have a special way to open the cash drawer that also calls for help. This could be considered as a duress code. Opening the cash drawer typically required the supervision of a second employee, but this special method opened the drawer instantly and also notified management.
No, opening the cash drawer does not require supervision, as then you would need to be two to conduct daily transactions with customers. Also all transactions are logged in the cash register, so thats why cash registers exist from the beginning - so you don't need to be two. Cash registers are nowadays used for tax enforcement and tax accounting, but before, cash registers existed solely for the store owner to know the employees are not stealing cash. HOWEVER, whats requires 2 is propably dislatching the cash drawer for counting. replenishing or emptying the cash registers. Then the amount of cash is cross-checked against the cash register, and then the counter is zeroed or reset to the "standard cash fill". This is then done at end of day and start of day.
@sebastiannielsen All correct. The cash drawer opens whenever you need to process a cash transaction. But to open it for other reasons, you need another person. I should have clarified that, good catch.
@@joem5254 most if not all stores have removed that feature. You can do a 0$ transaction to open the drawer. Its logged however. Reason is, that if a store employee wants yo open the drawer for other reason, like getting the storeroom key or toilet key, you could easily buy a bubblegum for yourself and pay the 10cent it costs. Or "do what you wanted to do" during or after a customer transaction. The point I wanted to make is that everything is logged in the cash register, so no reason to require a 2 person rule in any other case than when the tally is changed in the cash register, then there is a risk of cash slipping into someone's pocket.
When you said “Hinkley Hilton” I remembered when a client payed for me to attend a conference there in 2000 and I brought my wife. On a bus tour of D.C. they showed us the entrance where he shot Reagan and explained how it was modified after to be a protected entrance.
No! Pay attention! Obviously the guy who shot Reagan was the tour guide... Jodi Foster was there too though, she drives the tour bus... They make a surprisingly good team nowadays. They are always booked up nearly two years out, so I probably wouldn't even bother.
The exact type of lock is a LaGuard 3332. Silent duress systems all shapes and sizes. I’ve seen places with floor mounted pressure pads. If the employee doesn’t use a key and steps off of it, the alarm goes off. (In case of injury, or de-alivement)
Security through obscurity. Duress codes are awesome for opportunistic criminals so long as the people in charge remember that crucial detail. Obscurity definitely increases the cost, in terms of time and planning, but it cannot be relied upon for any dedicated, well-funded attacker.
Wow! That is brilliant that a mechanical lock can have such a feature added! I'd have expected this in some kind of digital combo lock like X-10 or similar but not a mechanical one!
TY for the video, don't see any sponsor tag as of 12:43pm Central on Dec 30th 2024. Only small note that you have unlocked your 5th Dedicated NSA Satellite! congratulations! Now the Sixth one is free, you can pick the options, want RGB? :P
Yes, I assumed maybe 20 came up in the ensuing dialogue while the baddie was watching her enter the combination and grabbing her hand. Never seen the film though.
I concur that it was "no distress code, open it clean". I worked at a Bank before college, it had appalling security including too loud switches for alarms (which was the most minor infraction) but the focus then and today is "give them money, let them leave". Video, height charts, etc. aid the FBI. The auto-dispense machines now used by Tellers in the bank are programed to disburse only a small amount for robberies.
I'm not a professional just an enthusiast but I live near the hotel and would love to come by and say hi. I really enjoy all the interesting things I learn on your channel. This might sound weird but it makes me feel better about the world hearing about things like lockpicking and firearms from the 'good guy' side
the lobby scene will be jumping i'm sure! if you live really close to the hotel, i've bee trying to ind someone who can take photos of the elevators they have there.... just photos of the car operating panel and the buttons that they have inside the elevator cabs. if you're up for that: deviant@deviating.net is my email address 😊👍
A lot of electronic safe locks have such a silent duress/hold-up alarm and other advanced features that usually work together with some kind of security/alarm system, like "remote lockout" (where someone from e.g. central CCTV monitoring can remote disable the entire safe lock) or "alarm lockout" (safe cannot be opened anymore when an alarm - usually an audible one - has been triggered through other means, e.g. an intruder triggering a motion, magnet or "alarm glass" sensor). Quite interesting video though, I didn't know such features were also available in mechanical safe locks. Better / higher-end security & access control systems can have similar features, which are often used together with "single-person-only gates" or other means of physical access control.
In the movie Dog Day Afternoon (1975) a plot point is the robber's knowledge of alarm triggers, including an alternate vault door key (which he calls a "spot key", no idea if accurate) that will trigger an alarm. Also an excellent movie and important in the history of queer films.
Interesting plot point of the movie, but the vault's dialing sequence was written by screen writers. I've set off silent alarms while working on safes, vaults, ATMs. Whether it was unplugging the wrong connector or setting off the vibration alarm while drilling a safe, it happens sometimes. The officer(s) who show up are usually cool and ask for an ID for their report. (your video on passport cards was brilliant, btw) There are ways of keeping that from happening.
The Netflix movie- “How to Rob a bank” The teller explains (in detail) there’s 6 duress trigger in each teller’s drawer. Where if the teller lifts the spring bar, that holds each denomination of money down, it will send a robbery alarm out to dispatch. Secondly there’s duress codes for the vaults that are easy to remember, even when you’re in a traumatic event like a robbery. Remember a vault manager is trained in what to do,say and act when being robbed. I’m not condoning anyone to ever engage in criminal activity! If you do then you should be accountable for your actions!
The spring bar doesn't trip the alarm if its lifted. However, there is a contact point below the spring bar, so if the spring bar is folded down WITHOUT bills in the drawer (or the last bill is taken out), a circuit would complete tripping the duress alarm. This circuit could easily be wired in series so ALL compartments must be emptied to trip an duress alarm, so the duress alarms doesn't trip during normal transactions. Or you could make it with a 2 of 6 circuit or similiar. Basically, the bill acts as a isolator between the circuit contact points. The idea is that during normal transactions, the teller would never consume the last bill, or only consume the last bill in one of the compartments, but during the robbery, the teller would take ALL bills, and emptying the compartments would then indicate a robbery. Reason is, its very easy to lift the spring bars, and I have seen tellers doing it all the time without problems. But I know about the feature. I think the features in the movie are slightly altered, to not become a "teach movie for criminals". Basically, they teach out there is certain duress features, but don't tell exactly how they work, so criminals can't use them in a crime.
So what I am hearing is that we need to modify the lock so that the duress code has the same last digit as the main code! OR, make it policy to always leave the dial at 0, or at the Duress last digit, so that an attacker can't see the correct last digit. (which is probably a wise security policy anyway lol
There are (possibly urban legend?) stories of home security systems with duress codes. The typical story is: a friend house sits while owners are vacation. First day at the house he forgets the code, and guesses the last digit. The alarm silences, he carries on and soon leaves, comfortable he "knows" the code. After a few days of this a swat team is waiting for him - the last digit was the duress digit, not the correct one.
I'm a nuclear PhD type... If you ever want help making sense of radiation stuff, including nuanced deep in the woods details, let me know and I'm happy to advise or help any way I can. This talk you are previewing sounds fascinating, I'm looking forward to it!
Hey Dev, there's an awesome podcast called Kill James Bond that's currently running a season all about various heist films. If you're able and interested, you should absolutely reach out to them about being a guest on an episode because I think you'd be a great fit
A feature that didn't translate well from dials to keypads, thats for sure. Late night silent distress call, local response shows up, place seems deserted from the outside, no response from inside, call for backup to breach, no sign of distress caller, now you've got the cavarly on standby for a potential hostage/kidnapping sitation... all because the guy who locked up fatfingered the code enabling the alarm on his way out.
this is why the system should be programmed to not do the duress at arm, only disarm. In vanderbilt/acre panels, this is done by connecting both the duress output and the "disarmed" output in parallel, so if the duress code is used to ARM the alarm, the "Disarmed" output would drop, causing the duress to bypass. An advantage of this is that you can safely arm with the duress code without arising response, which means someone spying on the code, or even a robber forcing you to leave the building and ARM the system (so you could later come back and disarm with the spyed code), then the robber or spy would actually get the duress code, and trip the duress when disarming.
Are these fading away, or are they just rare? My old house had a security system with a duress code. If I entered my normal code, the system would turn off. But, if I entered the duress code, the system would turn off and send out a silent alarm. It was a Napco alarm system.
Interesting bit about "maybe the bad guys knew the last number from previously observing the door" - but on a typical UL mechanical lock, observing the dial with the lock/door opened would not reveal a combination number. It would read approx 80-90 depending on the specific lock and install - that number is relative to the drive cam notch, not the last combo wheel. So that number would not change if using duress. Maybe these bad guys had observed someone dialing it open before, or (I think more plausibly) they just wanted to stress "no funny business" when she was dialing. LaGard locks do not always have their duress on wheel 3, there are variants. Their 4-wheel locks can have it on 2 or 3 if I recall correctly. Very cool to see it work with the back cover off! Dev, I'm looking forward to more safe lock/tech videos - if you couldn't tell I rather like that stuff!
indeed... i realized i worded that badly: i meant "maybe they were able to observe the opening sequence right near the end of the dialing process" but yes you're right generally the dial would be around the drop-in / bolt-throw zone since this wouldn't be a direct entry fence on a door like this!
That's been an option on many alarm systems for quite a while now. Can't remember which movie it was off the top of my head but I saw a movie that used one, even. Remember having to explain to my kid how that would have worked.
going back to zero on locks like the S&G 8560 or the 8430 has more to do with the cam or the accelerator arm than the wheel packs, so i think that in theory you could have a separate gate on the third wheel and a mechanism similar to what's seen here (unless LaGard still holds some kind of patent on this in which case S&G would have to license things, etc)
ha right. So that would make the duress code even more silent since you could not just look at the last number dialed when safe is opened, you would have to watch it live.
Ha ha ha Oh, I might’ve installed a few surreptitious contacts inside some compartments, it can be very tricky to get a decent contact inside of a drawer or a small door inside of a piece of furniture or some other kind of thing that you want to put something in and not have anyone know that it’s monitored I loved those type of challenges. Those were fun little projects. Time consuming, drilling and hiding of wiring and etc. good times
Duress codes seem like one of those "brilliant ideas" that doesn't really seem to make sense in practice. Why wait to open the safe, why not just press a silent alarm immediately as soon as you know there's a robbery? Plus, it's not going to work if the robbers are smart enough to strike when the safe is already open as is likely to be the case.
Short answer: so that the person being robbed can call for help unnoticed, with out angering the robber. In the end, valuables are insured, but a human live can’t be brought back. So it’s better to play along and give the robber no reason, that you are doing anything they don’t want. They get their stuff, leave you alone and hopefully get caught while leaving, on the run.
It is incredibly difficult to design a reliable silent alarm trigger that can be reached and set off with no odd or suspicious movement, yet not be set off by accident on a regular basis. If it is difficult to reach to protect it, the movement is obvious, if it is in a location not normally touched, the movement is obvious, if it is in a place that is often and easily used, it will have false alarms.
@@Tom_Losh One thing you can design a trigger is about NOT doing a thing. For example, "After disarming the burgular alarm, before opening vault, always logon to your computer". Skipping this step, and opening the vault before logging in, would trip the duress alarm silently. But this requires designing it backwards. Wait until a daily routine is "created" where everyone does everything in the same order, and then design the duress system out of this, without telling anyone. Not even the teller would know he/she in fact is tripping the duress alarm by just following the robber's instruction.
@@sebastiannielsen, what I described in another comment was years before one could simply "logon to your computer." The banks books were still paper. The bank's computer, when they got one, took up most of a building near the main office, miles away. The "girl" at that desk is now 98 years old. 🙂 Today it is easier.
When doing a quick review of this video prior to publishing, I spotted UA-cam strangely inserting a "this video contains paid promotional content" notice at the start of the clip. I have no idea what that's about, because this channel remains un-sponsored and un-monetized. Let me know with a reply if you see a similar disclaimer like that on this or any other of my videos.
Odd, seems fixed, I don't see it!
That is a checkbox, toggleable in the videos settings.
Also confirming that it seems fixed. The thumbnail-hover-over also does not show "Includes Paid..."
No notice for me
May i recommend you get motized cause when you do youtube pushes your content more
Decades ago I dated a woman who at the time was a branch manager for a large bank in a major city. Periodically, she would be in rotation to respond to a branch at night or the weekend if there was a problem with the ATM. These machines were built like small bank vaults on the inside with the electronics and cash dispenser on top and storage for more money on the bottom. Over a holiday weekend they could have $40K or more in a machine.
Mind you, some of these were in some high crime neighborhoods. I asked her if anyone had considered that these bank managers responding to reset or restock a machine might become targets for robbery, especially since there was like ten times the amount a typical bank robber gets in a regular hod up. She told me about the duress combination that worked exactly as you described.
It was only a few months later that a couple of employees were held at gunpoint and forced to open the machines. After that they stopped having young women respond by themselves and started sending armed guards to accompany them. A duress code is a good idea, but by then the employee is already a victim and given response times for alarm companies and law enforcement, the criminal is already gone.
In a previous job, the index finger was the "duress" finger for the fingerprint readers. We chose that one, since it would be the finger any malevolent actor would expect someone to use to open the doors.
Though standardization is a risk if the malevolent actor has insider knowledge as is relatively common.
@@petergerdes1094 True, in this case we didn't have a say in that. It was a hosted environment, and the property owner enforced that. In our locations that we managed, we used single-person mantraps with bullet resistant glass. There was a 10 second delay between cycles, so you could easily hit the "scram" button (a term we borrowed from the nuclear industry) on the other side, that would disable the door behind you. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best we could get the executives to fork over the cash for.
Some have multiple fingers per employee, regular entry and other.
I encountered a duress code at one of my previous jobs, but I'd forgotten all about it until now. I had to enter a code on a keypad to enter the office, and the system had a second, easy-to-remember code (it was a straight line down the keypad) that was the duress code.
i know hirsch scramble pads locks had this feature too
Also the duress code on at least one residential system I've seen.
RSA tokens had an optional duress mode where if you type in the last pin digit higher (say, 1235 instead of 1234) it triggered duress mode. The credentail would work once, set an alarm off, and disable the token.
wow I'd hate to typo that one!
Came here to mention this. IIRC, it was adding 1 to the last digit of your PIN, but without carrying. Thus, if your regular PIN was 1999, then your duress PIN was 1990, not 2000.
That's awesome
wow that's dope
Had a similar system when i worked at a cash center, but the keycard would not be disabled. It was meant to be a "silent" alarm, so that if for example someone kidnapped a family member and put a listening device on you you'd be able to go in, grab money and leave without alerting the kidnapper that you set off an alarm. There was also a sort of safe word for when someone accidentally put in the duress code to avoid going all in on a false alarm.
At a small company where I worked, we had a duress code on the building alarm. Some people did not understand the word "duress", but didn't want to ask what it meant - they just guessed and used the code in some way. After the second false _duress_ alarm, that feature was eliminated.
ooof yeah, user training and lack of understanding can undermine many special features, etc
Ages ago when my mother was "the girl in front of the safe deposit boxes" at her bank branch, there was a polished stainless barred door inside the vault door when the main door was open. The key was at her desk. The lock on the barred door seemed to work backwards from expectations: Turn right to unlock, turn left to send silent alarm. (There was also an alarm button at her desk, but she'd have had to nearly crawl under her desk to reach it.)
Reminds me a bit of how some prisons have door locks, particularly on doors to the outside, that will deliberately break and become permanently locked shut if you don’t use the key exactly correctly or insert the wrong key
Such a feature is what doomed an attempted 1946 escape from Alcatraz where the prisoners had successfully taken the guards hostage and obtained the keys
At a place where I used to work one of the safe rooms had twin combo locks which when moved from 0 would send an alarm to the guard post. Who would respond guns at the ready. Another thing was that most of the combination locks had a lead puck with concentric circles behind the wheel pack to make x-rays difficult. And yes this was in the UK
I'm going to talk about lead parts on my talk! The Chubb Mark 4 was notable for this in the UK.
The Chubb Manifoil Mk4, its predecessors dating back to the Merlin and the newer versions are all very interesting safe locks.
If you watch eBay carefully, the Mk8 makes an appearance periodically.
@@DeviantOllam Yes I can confirm they were MK4's
I've never seen a physical duress code, but I've seen digital duress codes at banks.
A lot of banks these days use cash recyclers - basically a combination ATM/Safe at each teller station. Many of those systems use a digital duress code in the teller software to both trigger a silent alarm and to automatically dispense a pre-determined amount of cash in the case of a robbery.
Ah yes duress dispense. Had to program a few strange bill mixes.
This was really interesting, I'm looking forward to the recording of the con talk!
A maintenance guy was telling me about a code on a keypad and that it was important to not get sloppy with it, because one of the employees did, and, allegedly, entered the wrong number for the last digit and it did disarm the alarm, but also the cops showed up in the parking lot. This was at a government building, I don't know how correct that was, but it sounds like it could be a style of duress code.
I've seen vault doors wired for alarms. And I've heard of duress codes. Although I've never seen duress codes in practice. Great video, thank you
Wow. Yes we have those for push button entry and there are Challenge answers for base sentries to let them know "I'm the right guy but a bad guy has a gun to my head" Let me in, then take over.
Never thought about Safe combinations. Very neat and a great idea.
Sadly, with AI voices, challenge codes are needed in families as well as business.
The 15 years ago when I was contracting at one of the annexes we are the keypad combination to give us access to the building in addition to our keys a pseudo two-factor authentication because it ran off your pendant an sqa types keep an odd hours we often thought it would be a great idea to have some sort of dress code built in and when we mentioned it to the government guards they thought of being an awesome idea as well for the 0.01% of time it may actually be a situation versus the 99% wear with just improve the morale of the staff. We all know that safety and Security is very high on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
BTW, you, 'O'LAF, now, I am going to BE needing YOUR PiN CODE to authorize cancelling that silent alarm just triggered by that antique safe combination some blue pillpopping psuedo-psycilopsychibin schmo from schmoo, suddenly surmising... FUTHER MUCKING, Therapeutic-Compression-Sox- Holden Cauliflower Field of Dream Weaving Happy New Year 2025 To All!!
There is also the opposite of the duress signal. A so called "All OK" signal. For example, Vanderbilt alarm system has this. This means you must follow a predetermited sequence of disarming the alarm system after putting in your code to disarm, and if that sequence was not followed, the duress alarm would trip.
The sequence could be anything, it could be walking to the break room and intentionally trip the motion detector there, and then opening the vault (bolt switch).
It could be something other out of the ordinary, like locking the front door after disarming, or opening the second drawer of a specific filing cabinet, or logging into the computer BEFORE opening the vault.
This effectively makes the physical environment part of the disarm code for the alarm system, but in such a way it trips a silent alarm if the numeric code is right but not the "physical code".
An advantage of this, is that you don't need to tell people that the sequence is part of a duress alarm system, you just tell people, that this sequence must be strictly followed. So they won't feel any anxiety of skipping this sequence when there is a robbery, the robber will of course "force" the teller to just disarm the system and just go directly to vault to unlock, which would "automatically" skip this sequence.
Like:
1: Disarm with code
2: Lock front door from inside
3: Go get the code paper with 365 daily codes for this year from the 2nd drawer cabinet.
4: use the daily code along with your personal username/password to logon to the computer
5: open the vault door for daily use
If 2, 3 or 4 is skipped before vault is opened, a duress is tripped. The robber, would never know that 2,3,4 prevents a distress call from being made, not even with inside knowledge, because even if he would ask a teller with gun "What happens if you don't logon to the computer first?" she would propably tell "I get fired for not following the exact opening procedure".
So by making a daily routine part of the duress alarm, and not telling anybody, you can easily do a system that is pretty much "automatic duress alarm".
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Another thing you can do, is to make the bolt sensor timed without an actual time lock. Basically, if the vault door is opened anything earlier than 40min before opening hours or later than 10 min after opening hours (opening hours, not closing hours, so there is a 50 min window to open the vault without tripping duress), the duress alarm will be tripped.
Reverse swipe for mag cards is a duress feature on some security systems, along with duress PIN codes
Hey dev! At 03:01 he actually says, "No distress code, open it clean", not "open at 20"
02:58 *
My grandmother, perhaps because of her time working in a bank before retirement, made sure when she got her home security system that she had it set up with both an “all clear” code in case the alarm was activated accidentally and a duress code that appears to be an all clear code until the cops show up.
Would seem prudent to put the duress mechanism on the second-to-last code wheel if knowing the final number of the correct combination is a possible factor
I was thinking a dialling sequence that will not result in an opening. You can pretend you are nervous but really looking to dial this duress code. This doesnt retract the bolt. Then you try again with the proper code to not get shot.
That just shifts the goal post. For a story about robbers with insider knowledge, they would just eyeball the second-to-last instead of the last, etc. As with any of these duress systems, insider knowledge can taint it.
OT: I have worked in museums and galleries with emergency buttons in their vaults. They are there in case you somehow get locked in.
A lot of restaurants have alarm buttons in the walk-ins for the same reason
I know it was used on electronic safe locks.
Never heard of duress codes on mechanical locks. Cool!
Security expert reacts to heist scenes. DO. IT.
dude if Wired or Insider calls me for a filming session i'm so there
@DeviantOllam there is so much work to be done.
Start as a safe tech next week thanks to videos like this.
Thanks bro
wow, really? that's so cool! will i see you at a future SafeTech trade show?
Yeah tbh your low-key one of the idols bro, you and mcnally are the two people I watch religiously, and inspired me to turn my life around, can’t believe it worked lol 😂, so thanks bro, big time.
Based on Wales in the UK so maybe one day!
All power to you and thanks again dude
RIP Shmoo! never got to go, guess that'll be my "got away"! rock on Dev! appreciate you bud!
Cash registers at department stores have a special way to open the cash drawer that also calls for help. This could be considered as a duress code.
Opening the cash drawer typically required the supervision of a second employee, but this special method opened the drawer instantly and also notified management.
No, opening the cash drawer does not require supervision, as then you would need to be two to conduct daily transactions with customers. Also all transactions are logged in the cash register, so thats why cash registers exist from the beginning - so you don't need to be two. Cash registers are nowadays used for tax enforcement and tax accounting, but before, cash registers existed solely for the store owner to know the employees are not stealing cash.
HOWEVER, whats requires 2 is propably dislatching the cash drawer for counting. replenishing or emptying the cash registers. Then the amount of cash is cross-checked against the cash register, and then the counter is zeroed or reset to the "standard cash fill". This is then done at end of day and start of day.
@sebastiannielsen All correct.
The cash drawer opens whenever you need to process a cash transaction. But to open it for other reasons, you need another person. I should have clarified that, good catch.
@@joem5254 most if not all stores have removed that feature. You can do a 0$ transaction to open the drawer. Its logged however. Reason is, that if a store employee wants yo open the drawer for other reason, like getting the storeroom key or toilet key, you could easily buy a bubblegum for yourself and pay the 10cent it costs.
Or "do what you wanted to do" during or after a customer transaction.
The point I wanted to make is that everything is logged in the cash register, so no reason to require a 2 person rule in any other case than when the tally is changed in the cash register, then there is a risk of cash slipping into someone's pocket.
That’s super neat! New office decor looks great, too!
Thanks! it's coming together =)
When you said “Hinkley Hilton” I remembered when a client payed for me to attend a conference there in 2000 and I brought my wife. On a bus tour of D.C. they showed us the entrance where he shot Reagan and explained how it was modified after to be a protected entrance.
yup! it's now a small carport with roll-up doors on each side
Wow your client shot Reagan? Jodi Foster must be swooning over you
No! Pay attention! Obviously the guy who shot Reagan was the tour guide... Jodi Foster was there too though, she drives the tour bus... They make a surprisingly good team nowadays. They are always booked up nearly two years out, so I probably wouldn't even bother.
*paid
Unless you were covered in waterproofing, I guess
The exact type of lock is a LaGuard 3332. Silent duress systems all shapes and sizes.
I’ve seen places with floor mounted pressure pads. If the employee doesn’t use a key and steps off of it, the alarm goes off. (In case of injury, or de-alivement)
Security through obscurity. Duress codes are awesome for opportunistic criminals so long as the people in charge remember that crucial detail. Obscurity definitely increases the cost, in terms of time and planning, but it cannot be relied upon for any dedicated, well-funded attacker.
Wow! That is brilliant that a mechanical lock can have such a feature added! I'd have expected this in some kind of digital combo lock like X-10 or similar but not a mechanical one!
TY for the video, don't see any sponsor tag as of 12:43pm Central on Dec 30th 2024. Only small note that you have unlocked your 5th Dedicated NSA Satellite! congratulations! Now the Sixth one is free, you can pick the options, want RGB? :P
I hear "open it clean", not "open at twenty". Enjoyed the video!
I heard that as well. "No distress code, open it clean."
it could be the case, yeah!
Yes, I assumed maybe 20 came up in the ensuing dialogue while the baddie was watching her enter the combination and grabbing her hand. Never seen the film though.
I concur that it was "no distress code, open it clean". I worked at a Bank before college, it had appalling security including too loud switches for alarms (which was the most minor infraction) but the focus then and today is "give them money, let them leave". Video, height charts, etc. aid the FBI. The auto-dispense machines now used by Tellers in the bank are programed to disburse only a small amount for robberies.
Love it. Awesome movie. Simple concept and explanation. Thanks Dev!
I'm not a professional just an enthusiast but I live near the hotel and would love to come by and say hi. I really enjoy all the interesting things I learn on your channel. This might sound weird but it makes me feel better about the world hearing about things like lockpicking and firearms from the 'good guy' side
the lobby scene will be jumping i'm sure!
if you live really close to the hotel, i've bee trying to ind someone who can take photos of the elevators they have there.... just photos of the car operating panel and the buttons that they have inside the elevator cabs. if you're up for that: deviant@deviating.net is my email address 😊👍
A lot of electronic safe locks have such a silent duress/hold-up alarm and other advanced features that usually work together with some kind of security/alarm system, like "remote lockout" (where someone from e.g. central CCTV monitoring can remote disable the entire safe lock) or "alarm lockout" (safe cannot be opened anymore when an alarm - usually an audible one - has been triggered through other means, e.g. an intruder triggering a motion, magnet or "alarm glass" sensor). Quite interesting video though, I didn't know such features were also available in mechanical safe locks. Better / higher-end security & access control systems can have similar features, which are often used together with "single-person-only gates" or other means of physical access control.
Now I really wish i could make it. Safe locks are both my favourite, and most hated things to deal with. Depends on the day. Lol. Have a good time!
Looking forward to seeing people at Shmoo again! (Just look for the rainbow haired unicorn) And I can't wait to see your talk, my love! 😍
@@AuthenticUnicorn yay, just a couple weeks away!
In the movie Dog Day Afternoon (1975) a plot point is the robber's knowledge of alarm triggers, including an alternate vault door key (which he calls a "spot key", no idea if accurate) that will trigger an alarm. Also an excellent movie and important in the history of queer films.
oh that's fascinating... i'll go back and look at that one!
Fascinating stuff! Have a great Con!!
Interesting plot point of the movie, but the vault's dialing sequence was written by screen writers.
I've set off silent alarms while working on safes, vaults, ATMs. Whether it was unplugging the wrong connector or setting off the vibration alarm while drilling a safe, it happens sometimes. The officer(s) who show up are usually cool and ask for an ID for their report. (your video on passport cards was brilliant, btw) There are ways of keeping that from happening.
The Netflix movie- “How to Rob a bank”
The teller explains (in detail) there’s 6 duress trigger in each teller’s drawer. Where if the teller lifts the spring bar,
that holds each denomination of money down, it will send a robbery alarm out to dispatch.
Secondly there’s duress codes for the vaults that are easy to remember, even when you’re in a traumatic event like a robbery.
Remember a vault manager is trained in what to do,say and act when being robbed.
I’m not condoning anyone to ever engage in criminal activity!
If you do then you should be accountable for your actions!
well we all now know what torrent i'm downloading right now
The spring bar doesn't trip the alarm if its lifted. However, there is a contact point below the spring bar, so if the spring bar is folded down WITHOUT bills in the drawer (or the last bill is taken out), a circuit would complete tripping the duress alarm. This circuit could easily be wired in series so ALL compartments must be emptied to trip an duress alarm, so the duress alarms doesn't trip during normal transactions. Or you could make it with a 2 of 6 circuit or similiar.
Basically, the bill acts as a isolator between the circuit contact points.
The idea is that during normal transactions, the teller would never consume the last bill, or only consume the last bill in one of the compartments, but during the robbery, the teller would take ALL bills, and emptying the compartments would then indicate a robbery.
Reason is, its very easy to lift the spring bars, and I have seen tellers doing it all the time without problems. But I know about the feature.
I think the features in the movie are slightly altered, to not become a "teach movie for criminals". Basically, they teach out there is certain duress features, but don't tell exactly how they work, so criminals can't use them in a crime.
Looking sooo forward to that talk ❤
thank you for posting
The final shmoocon is sad, but I get it.
Yup, common. Most banks dont use em! lol. Most banks have had too many false alarms.
I've been out for a minute, loving the backdrop! Not sure if that's new or not!
this is a new furry wall, yes =)
@@DeviantOllam, I almost feel we should see it breathing ... 😉
So what I am hearing is that we need to modify the lock so that the duress code has the same last digit as the main code! OR, make it policy to always leave the dial at 0, or at the Duress last digit, so that an attacker can't see the correct last digit. (which is probably a wise security policy anyway lol
There are (possibly urban legend?) stories of home security systems with duress codes. The typical story is: a friend house sits while owners are vacation. First day at the house he forgets the code, and guesses the last digit. The alarm silences, he carries on and soon leaves, comfortable he "knows" the code. After a few days of this a swat team is waiting for him - the last digit was the duress digit, not the correct one.
I always thought the line was "open it clean", that's what's in the script
Ah you may be right!
I'm a nuclear PhD type... If you ever want help making sense of radiation stuff, including nuanced deep in the woods details, let me know and I'm happy to advise or help any way I can. This talk you are previewing sounds fascinating, I'm looking forward to it!
would be glad to talk with you! send me an email? deviant@deviating.net
Thanks for sharing.
You're welcome 👍
Hey Dev, there's an awesome podcast called Kill James Bond that's currently running a season all about various heist films. If you're able and interested, you should absolutely reach out to them about being a guest on an episode because I think you'd be a great fit
that sounds cool!
A feature that didn't translate well from dials to keypads, thats for sure. Late night silent distress call, local response shows up, place seems deserted from the outside, no response from inside, call for backup to breach, no sign of distress caller, now you've got the cavarly on standby for a potential hostage/kidnapping sitation... all because the guy who locked up fatfingered the code enabling the alarm on his way out.
this is why the system should be programmed to not do the duress at arm, only disarm. In vanderbilt/acre panels, this is done by connecting both the duress output and the "disarmed" output in parallel, so if the duress code is used to ARM the alarm, the "Disarmed" output would drop, causing the duress to bypass.
An advantage of this is that you can safely arm with the duress code without arising response, which means someone spying on the code, or even a robber forcing you to leave the building and ARM the system (so you could later come back and disarm with the spyed code), then the robber or spy would actually get the duress code, and trip the duress when disarming.
Are these fading away, or are they just rare?
My old house had a security system with a duress code. If I entered my normal code, the system would turn off. But, if I entered the duress code, the system would turn off and send out a silent alarm. It was a Napco alarm system.
Interesting bit about "maybe the bad guys knew the last number from previously observing the door" - but on a typical UL mechanical lock, observing the dial with the lock/door opened would not reveal a combination number. It would read approx 80-90 depending on the specific lock and install - that number is relative to the drive cam notch, not the last combo wheel. So that number would not change if using duress.
Maybe these bad guys had observed someone dialing it open before, or (I think more plausibly) they just wanted to stress "no funny business" when she was dialing.
LaGard locks do not always have their duress on wheel 3, there are variants. Their 4-wheel locks can have it on 2 or 3 if I recall correctly. Very cool to see it work with the back cover off!
Dev, I'm looking forward to more safe lock/tech videos - if you couldn't tell I rather like that stuff!
indeed... i realized i worded that badly: i meant "maybe they were able to observe the opening sequence right near the end of the dialing process" but yes you're right generally the dial would be around the drop-in / bolt-throw zone since this wouldn't be a direct entry fence on a door like this!
Great video!
Glad you liked it! 😁👍
THE TOWN MENTIONED YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
They are putting duress codes in home keypad locks now.
That's been an option on many alarm systems for quite a while now. Can't remember which movie it was off the top of my head but I saw a movie that used one, even. Remember having to explain to my kid how that would have worked.
yeah... that's been done in the alarm world often with a "input your code in reverse" type of programming
@@DeviantOllam What if the code is something like 0660? (my previous randomly generated PIN, now retired)
@jamesphillips2285 hah, good question!
Have you ever done a GrrCon or going to at some point?
i attended ages ago... would love to come back!
Curious: can you make a duress code with a group 1r lock? (Given you have to dial back zero)
going back to zero on locks like the S&G 8560 or the 8430 has more to do with the cam or the accelerator arm than the wheel packs, so i think that in theory you could have a separate gate on the third wheel and a mechanism similar to what's seen here (unless LaGard still holds some kind of patent on this in which case S&G would have to license things, etc)
ha right. So that would make the duress code even more silent since you could not just look at the last number dialed when safe is opened, you would have to watch it live.
Not to be creepy but I want to read your brain like a book.
I know we have all thought it.
Good for you dude, sounds fantastic.
Ha ha ha
Oh, I might’ve installed a few surreptitious contacts inside some compartments, it can be very tricky to get a decent contact inside of a drawer or a small door inside of a piece of furniture or some other kind of thing that you want to put something in and not have anyone know that it’s monitored
I loved those type of challenges. Those were fun little projects.
Time consuming, drilling and hiding of wiring and etc. good times
Duress codes seem like one of those "brilliant ideas" that doesn't really seem to make sense in practice. Why wait to open the safe, why not just press a silent alarm immediately as soon as you know there's a robbery? Plus, it's not going to work if the robbers are smart enough to strike when the safe is already open as is likely to be the case.
Short answer: so that the person being robbed can call for help unnoticed, with out angering the robber. In the end, valuables are insured, but a human live can’t be brought back. So it’s better to play along and give the robber no reason, that you are doing anything they don’t want. They get their stuff, leave you alone and hopefully get caught while leaving, on the run.
It is incredibly difficult to design a reliable silent alarm trigger that can be reached and set off with no odd or suspicious movement, yet not be set off by accident on a regular basis.
If it is difficult to reach to protect it, the movement is obvious, if it is in a location not normally touched, the movement is obvious, if it is in a place that is often and easily used, it will have false alarms.
@@Tom_Losh One thing you can design a trigger is about NOT doing a thing. For example, "After disarming the burgular alarm, before opening vault, always logon to your computer".
Skipping this step, and opening the vault before logging in, would trip the duress alarm silently.
But this requires designing it backwards. Wait until a daily routine is "created" where everyone does everything in the same order, and then design the duress system out of this, without telling anyone. Not even the teller would know he/she in fact is tripping the duress alarm by just following the robber's instruction.
@@sebastiannielsen, what I described in another comment was years before one could simply "logon to your computer." The banks books were still paper. The bank's computer, when they got one, took up most of a building near the main office, miles away. The "girl" at that desk is now 98 years old. 🙂 Today it is easier.
If you see Holt or 3ric, please tell them I say hi, and that I miss them. :)
(It’s ok if you don’t, but I’d love that if you did.)
It pets the furry wall.
Installed thousands of alarm, druess code 9111
Here from @physicsduck Even though he didn't make me a clickable link and I am a lazy soul 😢 making me do work (grumble grumble grumble)
love him and love that you're here =)
I stopped because the title caught me.
But damn that was cool as poopie.
It makes sense that it would be a thing, but I'd have thought that was 100% Hollywood nonsense.
5:11 unless you are a safe technician, or a bank robber, i suppose.