First you’ll narrow the possible combinations from 64,000 down to 100. But you don’t have to try each of those 100 combos. There’s a simple task you go through to figure out the actual combination in a matter of minutes. Or just make a shim out of a coke can and pick it in 2 seconds. Now that you know a simple combo padlock is basically just a deterrent, you shouldn’t ever use one to lock up anything of real value.

Start by going to the hooks directory in your repository and copying pre-commit.tmpl as pre-commit. Then add the line to disallow changes to tags and run it. All is well, the change didn’t get committed, right? What just happened was the commit failed because the pre-commit wasn’t marked executable!