Could you hack it as a hacker?
There’s one scene in the movie “Disclosure Day” where the paramilitary group is trying to get into a warehouse with a locked door, and I swear the “hacking device” used 2 alligator clips attached to the housing of the lock. You can correct me if I misremembered, but for some reason that image stuck with me because I cannot think of one scenario that would make this device plausible.
How do circuits work?
Circuits are the flow of electrical current through a closed loop. All circuits have to form a loop from the voltage source to a load (like a lightbulb) and back to the voltage source. In reality, the circuit could have multiple paths that form a loop. Many string lights work like this, they have multiple strands of lights with one power source, so the power is divided between the strands based on the resistance of the strands. Since the resistance is about equal, they all look a similar brightness.
Back to the movie, the physical hacking device (voltage source) using metal clips attached to the housing of the lock would almost certainly just: form a loop by passing all current across the metal housing and back to itself (called a short circuit). It doesn’t matter where you attach the metal clips because one piece of metal physically has to have the same voltage at all points under most circumstances. The electricity will never flow into the lock’s internal circuit (assuming that was the intention). On top of that, a short circuit would usually damage or trip a breaker on the source device.
What is a plausible way to hack into a warehouse?
I’m not an expert hacker or anything, but this scene just triggered a gut reaction like “this isn’t right”. There’s actually a term for that called “verisimilitude”, which means the believability of a work of fiction. Even if the hack was done in the standard action movie fashion of opening the device and connecting two wires, it would have been more plausible. A bad lock could potentially have a workaround like that. Modern locks are all digital, so a hack could involve connecting a computer via USB or through the network to find a software vulnerability.
Tangent… I’ve been trying to get into animation as a creative outlet since I spend most of my time as a soul-less corporate sellout to support myself. Check out this short animation I made:
Like I showed in this short animation, the most plausible way to get through a lock for pretty much any situation is avoiding the lock completely. This is called “social engineering”, by tricking someone into trusting you, they will open the door for you or at least give you information to help you do it yourself. Pretending you’re a delivery driver, a friend of a friend, or someone more official is a classic spy movie trope for a reason. It happens. I’ve almost been tricked by scam callers pretending to be a bank or the IRS.
Anyway, even if I didn’t remember that scene correctly, I hope this was an interesting dig into circuits and hacking.