[ale] Story of Geek as Magician

[Jeff Hubbs]

Some years back when I was working for the Government, I was managing a
project to turn a small office into a miniature data center, and I had
arranged for the door to the office to be replaced with a window door
with a five-button cipher lock (best I could do under the
circumstances).  Because similar locks had been used to secure other
doors in the building, I had already been wondering about them and how
much protection they actually afforded.  

The deal behind the five-button locks is that you press three of the
buttons, in order, to open the lock.  This corresponds to the
statistical expression P(5,3), the answer to which may surprise you:  a
mere 60.  This means that a person could reasonably memorize a sequence
of 60 combinations and try them all, one after another, on such a lock
and defeat it in just a few minutes.  

As it happened, workmen installed the cipher lock but never got a hold
of me to give me the combination.  I told a colleague of mine what had
happened and that I could get into the room in just a few minutes and he
thought I was BSing him.  With no practice, I was able to open the lock
in just under two minutes.  The guy who doubted my claim so confidently
that he didn't even come watch me do it had his jaw on the floor when i
came back to him with the combination.  

I am no superman, but supermen exist.  I asked my colleague how much he
knew about Harry Houdini.  Anyone seeking to understand security needs
to study Harry Houdini.

Houdini's abilities as a magician can be categorized in three different
ways.  The first was mere trickery of the sort that The Masked Magician
revealed; rigged props, equipment, and the like.  The second was
preparation; he had bought and disassembled almost every lock 
manufactured at the time and determined how to defeat them using his
fingers AND his toes, using various tools of his own design.  He learned
how to swallow objects and produce them on demand and could even
dislocate his own shoulders at will.  His breath-holding and ability to
withstand bitter cold were highly developed.  Third was his sheer
physical gifts.  A powerfully-built small man, Houdini exploited his
thick, wiry hair as a hiding place for metal bits and hunks of wire that
he would fashion into lockpicks.  The best Houdini tricks combined these
abilities because even jaded onlookers realized that even if there were
fakery afoot, there were still aspects of the gags that simply defied
what a person would be thought to be able to do.  

I figure that at one time, the world probably harbors a few hundred
Houdinis, and it's a matter of motivation for each of them to determine
if they are superheroes, supervillians, or just damn good entertainers. 

- Jeff


---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.