Are floppy drive locks any good?
November 3rd, 2005EMail this article
There are numerous products on the market that allow you to lock a PC to something or lock an aspect of the PC (such as the floppy drive) to prevent unauthorized tampering.
But are they any good?
In a word, no. A while back a story broke all over the web that the kind of locks that are used in these products can be opened with a pen ...
I decided to give it a go with this Kensington floppy drive lock:
Take the insides out of the pen ...
Shove the pen into the lock hole:
Twist - and pop!
Since it's rubbish anyway I though I may as well take it apart! First, I split the plastic casing (dead easy plastic to break as well).
The lock now simply pops out!
A small spring clip keeps the lock together - time to remove that!
This exposes the lock mechanism and all the pins. These spring-loaded pins are what locks/unlocks the mechanism. The key presses them down far enough so the thick part of the pin is pushed below notches in the lock mechanism.
Here are the pins:
And here are the notches in the lock mechanism.
Here is a single pin assembly:
Here is the pin separated from the spring:
And here is the assembly that holds all the pins in place. This assembly turns inside the outer casing that has the notches on the inside shown above.
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