August 2009 Archives

If the goal was to stop cars from entering the court, it would fulfill its purpose under normal circumstances. People trying to break the door by driving through with a truck would not consider the door as a great obstacle. Looking at the issue that one side of the door was open most of the time, but locked at specific dates, raises another interesting question: What was the purpose of locking the door? The door is not high enough to keep people from jumping over it. If the owner just wanted to indicate, that he doesn't like anyone to play there, but doesn't care if someone does - then it fulfilled its purpose. If he really wanted to keep people from playing he either didn't want to spend more money on building higher walls, he didn't want to build higher walls because the would look bad or he just didn't think of someone climbing over closed doors. Of course, the intention of locking the door could have also been to have legal possibilities to sue people using the court without asking. Or, he just didn't think anything when leaving the place locked or unlocked. 

As you can see, security must be applied individually to each situation, purpose and financial situation. Therefore finding appropriate solutions after doing an assessment can only be done in cooperation with the responsible persons to ensue that the solution really fits the needs and means available.

There might be a few problems with this high security station. First it just protects against acts from drunken people, as they just kick or push against the machines. Attackers who first think about possible attack points will enough to go further. For example - there must be some openings for selecting the goods, paying and taking the selected drink. In this case these openings are very generous and you have enough space to get your whole hand or some tools in. You can't see this in this picture, but the machines are placed about 20-30 cm behind the first door, which gives enough room for attacks. 

Second, the whole security is built upon the security of the padlock you can see in the middle of the picture. It doesn't look like a high-security padlock. I leave the rest to you imagination. 

The third point to mention is that the hinges are accessible for the attacker. This might or might not be a problem. As attacking the hinges will take some time and make some noise, so that security personell will perhaps recognise the attack. I have not and will not try out this scenario.

Perhaps you might come to some additional attack points or have an other opinion. In such a case, don't hestitate to write your opinion as comment to this article.

Unfortunately, you can't see the switch for opening the main gates in this picture. It's a little more on the left side, just between the entrance to the police station itself and the door to be openend.

Although the attacker isn't able to get through this hole herself, she just would need to dismount the outer and the inner grid of this leakage and pull the switch to open the main gates with the help of some experienced tools like a stick.