If you don't know him already, I highly recommend videos by LockPickingLawyer — he routinely destroys bogus claims of various companies within seconds. It's quite entertaining to see how little security you actually get from most locks.
I wonder if anybody tried suing him…
LPL owns Covert Instruments, who employs McNally, the YouTuber who got sued in this case. Probably not a coincidence that Covert Instruments wasn't named in the lawsuit.
I wonder if McNally knows a lawyer familiar with lock picking ;-)
Oh sweet never knew there was a connection between LPL and McNally - I just notice they always cut their shims from cans the same way
There aren't that many ways to cut a shim from a can that work and don't take excessive effort. It's a rounded hook shape, with a handle piece trimmed so you don't cut yourself.
Well they make it look easy I always end up cutting myself
I think McNally was in at least one of his videos if I remember correctly.
That explains so much. Done to well for a goof channel, eclectic assortment of skills ("tactical garden trowel" vs fully equipped metal shop vs perfect video production), all fat trimmed off the videos.
I kinda want tvtropes to put a name on his slapstick humor. It's like looking over the shoulder of that weird uncle that seems to live in an entirely different world.
In addition I've seen LPL refer to "my friend Trevor McNally" in a couple of videos.
> Probably not a coincidence that Covert Instruments wasn't named in the lawsuit
What's the non-coincidence?
That they avoided naming the lawyer or the lawyer's company in their bogus lawsuit and instead only named the non-lawyer.
He can still defend his employee, right?
My understanding is that LPL is not still practicing (he says he's retired, to focus on security work), but I'd guess he knows someone, if McNally didn't already have his own lawyer.
Even if he was practicing, if he were to take this case it would pretty obviously expose who he was.
So no matter what I would expect LPL would get someone he knew/equivalent to take the case.
I mean, it's not exactly a secret. If you really want to know you can look it up online. He even has a whole talk he gives about why he generally doesn't reveal his identity. People send him packages with trackers hidden in them, hire private investigators to follow him with bogus stories, etc.
> he routinely destroys bogus claims of various companies within seconds
I watched his video on high-security shipping container locks. Jeez, two minutes long? They must be tough!
No, it was two minutes long because he bypassed ten of them, one after the other.
My impression of most locks now is that they're really just to stop something from being casually broken into or even just falling open by accident.
My dad's wisdom as he cut my bike lock off when I lost the key in middle school: "locks keep honest people out."
I have a friend who says "gun control keeps law-abiding people unarmed."
Gun control gives cause for arresting any law breaking people. See how such parables go both ways?
Point is, gun control has led to a reduction in gun crime in every country I know of. Thats hard evidence against your qippy one-liner.
Crime had already been falling consistently for several hundred years throughout Europe when the first gun-licensing and gun-control laws were being passed in the Wiemar Republic. You don’t need control over weapons to reduce crime, you just reduce crime.
Incidentally, a few years later a certain political party got their candidate elected Chancellor. He more or less immediately ordered the police to use the gun-licensing records to identify Jews who owned guns and had them arrested. It’s actually pretty hilarious, in a very dark way, to read some of the arrest reports. When Jews were ordered to surrender their weapons to the police, many of them brought the weapons to a police station as instructed. They politely stood in line while the officer at the desk wrote out arrest warrants for them one after the other. The crime? Carrying an unlicensed weapon. The location? The police station in such-and-such precinct. The witness? The officer at the desk. The prisoner? Turned over to the SS.
USA has no gun control and has just had a similar political upheaval, with zero armed resistence.
lets not pretend.
There is nothing even remotely similar about it.
People who think it's a good idea to walk around with weapons should be arrested.
Yeah, but criminals do not care, law-abiding citizens do... so who ends up being the victim in such scenarios? Typically the law-abiding citizen.
Not in any civilised country. Criminals do have guns in my country but firearm use is incredibly rare and use is restricted to crim V cop and crim v crim because police response and enforcement are so harsh for gun crime it isnt worth it unless it quite literally becomes life or death.
So then non criminals, while not armed with guns, face no real gun violence because even getting access to guns requires critical thinking and intelligence at least sufficient to understand risk vs reward well enough to understand civilian pop isn't a reasonable use case for firearms. Any firearm related incident here is a multi week news item. Stuff thats everyday in the USA and doesnt even make local news.
So, our cops and our criminals are armed, and i can trust my kids wont get shot up in school, i wont get shot in a store robbery, or by a disgruntled coworker etc.
You dont quite understand how bad it is I think, USA americans who move here have an adjustment period and usually need mental health support coping with leaving a country where getting shot in a road rage incident, for example, is a real risk. I had a colleague driving break down after cutting someone off accidentally, the cut off swerved ahead of us aggressivly stopped traffic got out and started shouting. Eventually wore themsleves out, as they do, got vack in car and kept driving. Didnt stress me too bad but my coworker driving totally shut down. Why? A year earlier a coworker in the USA did something similar and the person with road rage got out and started shooting at their car.
That's not normal. Not even close.
It’s also extremely rare here, when looked at rationally. Those kinds of shootings are limited to specific areas of the country. The other 99% of the country faces nothing like that, ever.
> police response and enforcement are so harsh for gun crime it isnt worth it
That's the key right there. USA enforcement is far less than what it needs to be, especially in (dare I say it) Democrat-controlled local districts.
The number of soft-on-crime DAs elected has increased significantly in the last 30 years, and the fraction of violent crime cases that are left unsolved has also increased significantly.
It's gotten so bad that a lot of conspiracy theories are circulating, like "Davos people want to destabilize the US, so George Soros is donating millions through his Open Foundation to soft-on-crime DA local election campaigns."
I like my 2nd, 4th, and 5th amendment rights.
I don't want to live in a world where cops can stop people for speeding and use it as probable cause to search my car.
I also don't want to live in an environment where when I'm seconds away from danger, my only protection is minutes away.
Warren v. DC also clearly established that police departments cannot be held civilly liable for even gross negligence of duty.
"You can all go to hell. I'm going to Texas."
-Davy Crockett
With guns being uncontrolled police have plausible deniability on demand to gun down anyone they like. No free unrestricted gun access means gunning down people as they please isnt justifiable anymore.
so if its about safety, in a country actively descended into facism, aren't you worried about freedom of political expression given you can just be gunned down at a moments notice and it gets brushed away?
You're more worried about some hypothetical apocalyptic scenario where lawful firearm owners suddenly lose their minds and fall into mass-psychosis than you are about existing known violent criminals committing more violent crimes.
I can guarantee you that those "backwards" wheat farmers from Salina, KS with $10k worth of hunting rifles and shotguns just don't think about people like you on a daily basis. Their minds are on the wind, rain, beetles, and grain futures, not "how can we launch a successful invasion against Somerville, MA?".
Frankly, I'm a lot more worried about my Greek classmate being assaulted by a "Free Palestine" moron who can't tell the difference between the flags for Israel and Greece:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14004125/TikTok-Gre...
As for mob violence in general, I'm just not worried about complete strangers wanting to risk their lives in a firefight to kill me. The kind of people who are attracted to angry mobs are not the kind of people volunteering to drive the Waffen SS out of Eindhoven or chase the Japanese out of the Philippines.
Likewise, the people violently assaulting Jewish pre-med students in America are there because the IDF in Gaza scare them.
If the kind of people you most fear and hate wanted war, they could just stop growing your food and let you starve to death.
Not trying to belittle you, so much as reassure that if Trump supporters really wanted to hurt you, they would have done it already in 2015.
> Point is, gun control has led to a reduction in gun crime in every country I know of. Thats hard evidence against your qippy one-liner.
That's a tautology - of course it did. The real questions are - what percentage of violent crimes were committed with guns after after gun control, how much did overall violent crime decrease after gun control, and to what extent was gun control provably responsible for the reduction of violent crime (when statistically controlling for other factors that reduce violent crime)?
The overall slope of the violent crime curve has been negative, but the value may have been more negative if it were not for gun control.
Also, I think history will bear this out in the coming centuries -- totalitarianism and terrorism can flourish far better when citizens are unarmed.
Youre missing an important detail - how many deaths / maimings per violent offense. If violent offences dont drop but those do, worth no? How about school shooters - will people no longer crash out and attack their classmates? No. We havent solved the underlying issue, however, such a crashout sans guns seems siginificantly more preferable to me.
besides, the usa has proven that freedom to access guns doesnt protect you from dictatorships / authoritarian governments. That was the main stated constitutional reason for having that right.
So the USA hasn't seen any benefits from free gun access ans has lost uncountbaly many lives to death and trauma. How is it still justified?
> Gun control gives cause for arresting people who are armed
FTFY
Yup. I think that is a neat and internally consistent statement that doesnt omit facts. One can do with that statement what one wants, but if carrying arms becomes extremely risky, if using arms carries an burden akin to dying, you can bet that criminals who are quite good at weighing risk v reward will not be running amok.
Your friend should look at almost any other Western, developed nation for counterexamples
Your friend sounds like a good guy. Hopefully you're with him when you're out in public, and some sicko goes postal or some bum with a drug addiction starts waving a knife at you.
I definitely feel safer when I'm around him :)
He has very carefully rehearsed a lot of situations in his mind, and I'm confident he would only draw his weapon when actual lives are in imminent danger (like an active armed assailant situation).
I used to be a competitive marksman through JROTC, and the FUD around firearms is so overblown compared to the fear most people should have while driving their car or doing certain jobs.
A chem lab staffed only by trained professionals is still a lot more dangerous than an indoor range in a red state. A firearm in Cletus' hands is a lot safer than a beaker of sulfuric acid in anybody's hands, let alone piranha solution.
And all of that is nothing compared to the danger of being on a road with other cars, many of which are operated by people who simply do not give a f***.
100% agree. But - firearms (combined with training and skill) carry far more risk asymmetry compared to cars, sulfuric acid beakers, or even explosives. I think that's why there's more fear around letting people carry them. The potential damage to personal risk ratio is higher with firearms.
But the root public policy problem is the same no matter what the weapon is: violent criminals will harm people, others generally won't. So the most effective policies have to lean heavily on good police and DA behavior, to make sure violent criminals aren't able to keep harming people. Going after the weapons criminals use is effectively a red herring if known violent criminals are still generally at large. Any policy intended to reduce violent crime will fail insofar as cases continue to go unsolved, and police, DAs, and courts don't enforce the law when the identities of violent criminals are known.
I assume your friend never bothers to lock their door?
Locking doors makes legal follow-up easier: "The deceased - do you know if he broke and entered?" "Yes, your honor. I always lock my doors at night. Exhibit A is a video of him busting the door down after trying the doorknob."
That's a really well put. We are expecting a son soon and as I was reading this read and your comment, I couldn't help but asking myself will I ever say anything that my son will remember for years. And how can I be prepared.
Your dad sounds like a very wise man.
I've watched LPL videos and practiced on regular locks, I can pick something that is about 10$ or less, but these expensive locks with good tolerances (Abus) or disc detainer cores (kryptonite locks,) no amount of practice and fiddling with the correct tools has ever opened one of these. I lack the skill or touch.
I can hold a 18v grinder with a cutoff wheel just fine though, I lost the keys to one of those kryptonite locks on my bike and I was riding my bike again 30 seconds later.
Or to make it clear that if someone does break the lock, they didn't have your permission to get at whatever it was protecting.
Yep, it’s like those security screws, they’re not used to stop you opening the box, they’re used to prove that you knew you shouldn’t be opening the box.
Most of the time they’re just there to make you _think_ that you shouldn’t be opening the box. In the US the Magnusen–Moss Warranty Act of 1977 explicitly prohibits companies from voiding any warranty merely because the owner opened up the device, repaired it, or had it repaired.
you are adjacent to the concept that locks are an honest persons way of communicating to other honest people that an invitation is required.
This one? https://youtu.be/_goIYP3FfO8
That’s McNally rather than LPL.
You are using a Master Lock model 606. It can be opened with a Master Lock model 606.
Can he pick an Assa Abloy lock though?
Many, often, quickly.
LPL is a crown jewel of YouTube. His April Fools' Day videos are hilarious, too, like the one where he gets into his wife's beaver [0] (SFW).
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRozAbaKs9M
The Dutch translation is NSFW though as it translates “beaver” as suggested.
Does the Dutch word for beaver also act as a euphemism for the body part in Dutch?
More explicitly so. The Dutch go rodent where Americans go feline.
~No it sadly doesn’t, so the double meaning will be lost in translation. If the lock depicted a pussy it would’ve worked though.~
After going over https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seksuele_volkstaal_en_eufemism... it seems that “bever” is apparently also used as euphemism. As is “floppy drive” TIL!
> It's quite entertaining to see how little security you actually get from most locks.
Yeah, one of my conclusions after years of watching LPL is ironically to start buying cheaper locks.
The difference between a $3 and a $300 lock is just about a minute of time for an experienced lockpick. No lock is capable of dissuading a determined thief, but any lock is equally capable of dissuading a lazy one.
The best policy is to have a lock that is resistant to cutting and destruction, with a trivial key. Nobody tries to pick a lock, and if they do, they're winning. Most or all breakins happen through brute force not technical sophistication, so a decent chunk of metal is a fine adaptation.
About the only thing I've seen that qualifies is the no-car, metal gates to walking/camping trails in State Parks (PA, anyway.) The key-lock is surrounded by a 1/2" steel can, with only the bottom open and some distance to the lock itself. Attempting to pick that would mean being upside down 2 feet off the ground. The steel shroud would thwart a casual angle-grinder for long enough not to bother.
Most other security for locks I've seen could be defeated with 60 seconds and a 3" cutoff tool that fits in a pocket.
Good old "sketch-resistant materials". If a tweaker can't get through your lock/chain before the cops (might) show up, you're probably fine.
When all else fails, drummers are the best security anyway: https://loudwire.com/sleeping-drummer-stops-band-trailer-the...
[dead]
I use the locks my insurance company recommends. That's who it's there for anyways.
The other side is "career" thieves will know how to pop-can shim a lock but most of them are not going to use or break out a set of picks. One main reason it's an additional felony charge if you get caught using them. So a _slightly_ better lock is sometimes warranted for outdoor applications.
The final piece is they'll just steal a car and then drive that car through your shop front to get what they want. Up here in Northern California a gang pulled off the same heist as the movie "Casino." They drove a van up to a wall and then knocked out a small segment of the wall to gain entry.
>The difference between a $3 and a $300 lock is just about a minute of time for an experienced lockpick.
How about non-experienced lockpick? Or the one who gonna brute force everything? I think there's value is expensive lock (Assume you buy the high quality one, not the over-price one)
Yep. The low hanging fruit principle in action. You can’t make anything completely secure so you put up more obstacles than your neighbor so the attackers go visit the neighbor instead.
Or in the case of targets with no neighbors like missile bases, you know approximately how long it might take an attacker to succeed, then put big guys with guns within that distance measured by time.
Unless you're a retail jewelry store. Then you are absolutely the main target in your area.
I'm considering an angle grinder resistant lock for the bicycle. They are not totally uncuttable but it means you have to be stood there for a couple of minutes changing worn cutting disks and the like. Quite expensive though.
I came to the same conclusion with my bike. What's the point of an expensive and heavy chain lock, when the thief will break or bypass it anyway.
So I just fot a cheap wire combination lock, just so you can't just jump in the bike and ride away.
Oh, this is where I disagree. A wire can be quietly and discreetly cut with wire cutters in seconds. This is no protection at all. It's just inconvenience for you.
What I've been using for years is a heavy chain with a lock (disc-detainer style). The chain weighs around 3.5kg. You can of course cut it with an angle grinder, but have you ever tried cutting a chain with an angle grinder without a vise? The chain slips away and it's really difficult to hold it in place for the cutting, which would take more than a minute.
All those Kryptonite-style U-locks have the disadvantage of being easily fixed in place for the cutting. They are also useless for attaching your bike to large trees, street lights, etc.
Remember that if a bear is chasing you, you don't have to outrun the bear, you only have to outrun your friends. If there are 4 bikes and my bike is the most difficult to steal, I'm fine.
It's completely different to snip a cheap wire lock or even just pull hard on it and have the lock break versus pulling out the angle grinder and making a huge racket for a minute.
LPL is superb. He inspired me to get a lock pick kit and a few simple padlocks - a cheap and fun hobby during COVID lockdowns.
I picked up and started practicing with Lishi lock tools, and I cannot recommend them enough. Pocket Tool Warehouse out of Texas has been good in my experience for sourcing them, no affiliation. Like an automatic transmission for lock picking.
https://www.classiclishi.com/about/lishi-history
https://www.originallishi.com/what-are-lishi-tools
Ditto. I was even able to put my lock picking skills to use one fine summer day when the dog park was locked due to "rain from yesterday" even though the grass and everything was clearly fine. We had a lovely time running around as a family, along with a couple other families, for about an hour before the groundskeeper came and shooed us away.
When we moved last time, our "financials" filing cabinet accidentally got locked (one of the ones with button lock) and I wound up having to pick it. The ability, even at a basic level, comes in handy more often then you would expect.
At a previous company, a power outage knocked out our router, which knocked out the card access system, which locked us out of the server room where the router was. Good news, there was a physical key bypass. Bad news, nobody knew where said key was. Lucky for us, I could pop out to my car, grab my picks, and then got the thing open in a couple of minutes.
Definitely the most above-the-board use those picks ever got (Though obtaining access to my university dorm's AC controls definitely made me more popular).
Heyyy, guerilla HVAC team!
In high school I didn't even have lockpicks, I just carried a super tiny pair of needle-nose pliers along with some other tools in my Five-Star zipper binder, and the tips of the pliers were fine enough to stab into the holes of those stupid snake-bite security screws that held down the thermostat covers in the classrooms.
Once teachers realized I could open the thermostat covers and adjust their setting in seconds instead of the hours it took to go the official route, not only was I very popular, they would occasionally send hall passes to summon me from other rooms to perform the service. I was doing fine in my studies and this was not an academic impediment, it was just hilarious. Eventually I just started leaving the covers loose, a fig-leaf that the custodial staff seemed content to ignore.
...
Fastforward a few years into my career, still not carrying lockpicks, but much more familiar with the art. A shipment of cabinetized network hardware arrived, but the cabinet keys were not ziptied to the doors as was customary. The installers were looking at having to go home with a short timesheet because they couldn't work.
I was in the NOC for another reason entirely, but I asked the supe to cover me for a minute and trotted out to the equipment room. I swiped a couple pins from the corkboard (for some reason, the office used dissection T-pins instead of regular pushpins), bent the tip of one, used the other as a turning tool, and proceeded to rake open one of the cabinets. The install crew lead's jaw hit the floor. I insisted on teaching him to do the rest, and moments later not only had he opened the rest of the cabinet doors, he had scared himself with how easy that just was, and stood in silence for a minute, shocked by his newly-acquired skill.
Very Harry Tuttle, although to be fair everything feels a little Brazil these days.
Early in our dating, my (now) wife moved into a new apartment and accidentally turned in the key to the back patio storage room with the keys to the old place. She was embarrassed to ask the old landlord, so she asked me to ask him. Instead, I popped home, picked open the patio storage lock, and then re-keyed the lock to match the front door. When I was a teenager I bought a (apparently lifetime) supply of assorted lock pins.
Picking filing cabinet locks is part of the genesis of modern hacker ethos. Feynman would be proud.
See also: https://www.lysator.liu.se/mit-guide/MITLockGuide.pdf and the book "Hackers".
Er... that's a crime?
The ethic, IIRC, is that you only pick locks that you own, or that you have permission to pick.
Also, maybe the groundskeeper knows things about groundskeeping that you don't, on account of how much time they spend doing their job, which is keeping the grounds.
I had to use my lockpicking skills when my grandma moved across country to live with my mom. She put her stuff in a "Portable On-Demand Storage" container and accidentally put the key to the lock with her stuff inside the container.
Luckily, she used the shitty round lock that a lot of storage companies recommend. I was able to pick it in just a couple minutes. Someone like LPL would have had it open in mere seconds.
Thritto.
Thinking of doing the same! Which kit did you order? I see a FNG, FNG+ Bundle, and "Learn lockpicking bundle". 3rd one seems the most likely candidate. Any tips you can share? Thanks!
Start with a cheap kit from e.g. Amazon which includes a couple of perspex locks so you can see what you're doing. Get a real set of picks for real money once you graduate from that.
I got the Learn Lockpicking bundle a few years back, it's a solid customizable lock - six slots, a few different pin styles, and the springs to make it work. I got practiced enough to get a 3-pin opened, but I'm definitely out of practice now.
I’ve got a German practice lock and boy was that a hard wake up call. That thing was so hard to pick that I gave up. (The keyhole is really slim)
My bad though, LPL did warn about this.
I did the same (also during COVID, after doing it for a bit in my youth). I haven't tried Covert Instruments gear, I bought some other pack from China, but whatever pack you can find with the basics (and maybe some variety so you can try different techniques) plus a training padlock so you can see what's going on inside, and it'll be a walk in the park.
I got a £50 pick set from https://x.com/martin__newton
https://imgur.com/a/sbXoBCK
Same here. It also inspired me to teach my kids. Watching my nine year old daughter pick a lock warmed my subversive little heart.
Putting the lock in lockdown I see.
> It's quite entertaining to see how little security you actually get from most locks.
Physical locks are for honest people. They signify that something is not meant to be accessed and at best slow down someone actively trying to access the other side of the lock.
I recall either "The lock picking lawyer" or McNally explains that only in 3% of cases are locks picked during a burglary. In all other cases windows or doors are simply forced open. So at best locks are meant to prevent of crimes of opportunities.
Yeah my understanding of burgling is it’s all about speed. One of the best deterrents you can have is I think called “laminate glass,”that doesn’t shatter into a bunch of pieces when it’s hit. It has a tendency to hold together so they have to spend precious seconds knocking out more of it which almost always makes them run away rather than risk it.
If I can go out on a limb here, I also think I recall that they have very specific things they look for. For instance they will often run straight for the master bedroom and start pulling out drawers/checking closets because people tend to keep jewelry in there. They want small items.
Anything that slows them down tends to deter them even if they make an initial attempt
Impact glass is one option. Another option is to have security film installed on your existing windows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_APQ3CzQno
Security film! That’s the one I was trying to find it first but then I found laminate glass and assumed I was mistaken.
One day I came into the office and noticed that one of our neighbors doors had a triangular hole cut into it near the door handle. It was a solid core door on an interior hallway. One of our cameras picked up the sound, someone brought a chainsaw and in about 30 seconds cut a hole in the door so they could reach through and open it from the inside. They took the safe, but I was told the safe was empty.
Oddly, this is a case where they would have had plenty of time to pick the lock as well, and it would have been much quieter.
> at best locks are meant to prevent of crimes of opportunities
A lock forces the thief to either spend time defeating it or physically break something. Even if it doesn't slow him down it should hopefully make it visibly obvious that he's doing something illicit.
IIRC there's a legal distinction between mere unauthorized entry and unauthorized entry that involves circumventing any kind of lock
You know those super secure double-glazed front doors, with the kind of hook things that engage when you push the handle up?
You can spudger one of the glass units out and back in from the outside, without leaving a mark.
They look better than they are.
Most uPVC windows and doors should have the beads on the inside and a solid profile on the outside.
I have heard of someone cutting through all the plastic and pulling the glass out that way, though.
Both rather more obvious that surreptitiously jiggling the obscenely crappy Eurocylinder that the door came with.
This is why the complaint about smart locks being hacked is so utterly ridiculous to me. A thief isn't going to hack your lock, they're going to bash a window in
Even if I can unlock a hypothetical 90% of physical locks, I still need to go in person to every house that has one. On the other hand, if I crack one smart lock I now have remote access to every home that has one, and I can operate on all of them simultaneously. Anything internet-connected makes doing damaging things at scale much easier.
Smart locks potentially give access to things that windows don't, like upper floor apartments.
They're also effective against incompetent thieves. Anecdotally that's a pretty high percentage of thieves you'll ward off that way.
Exactly. There's a lot of strongly worded stuff in here about how easy locks are to defeat, but that's only against someone who's practiced the art, which is a very small percentage of the population. And in my experience they're mostly honest people interested in the technical challenge, rather than criminal exploitation. A typical modern lock is going to massively slow down or outright stop nearly everyone who comes up against it.
Yeah, moar burglars aren't the kind who spend 10000 hours honing their skills.
People with that kind of dedication can often find gainful employment :)
I think that it's more useful to think of all defenses against physical intrusion as increasing the cost of intrusion in some way, be that time, skill, risk of being caught, access to specialized devices, etc.
Most "normal" locks don't increase the cost too much but they do raise it - perhaps enough for a thief to pick another target, or perhaps enough for the thief to choose another method of entry such as kicking in the door (which itself comes with additional risk of detection).
Exactly it is about layers. It is the same with computer security. Is my network "unhackable" no. But I've put up enough layers of basic security that script kiddies and the like won't be able to get in.
It requires a fair amount of skill to pick a lock quickly. Someone capable could probably make more money doing something legit.
Depends, do you count wave-raking as picking? I bought a cheap lock-picking set, takes me about 5 minutes to get their basic perspex lock open. "Masterlock", wave rake opens it in a few seconds -- even my then 10yo could open it in <30s.
Yeah, like running a Youtube channel on lock picking.
Or like being a lawyer?
Or both :)
Having heard of a typical locksmith's rates, if you can pick locks well then you really, really do not need to resort to burglary.
Security is about layers. If I have a basic lock, all I want to do is stop an opportunist.
I have a vehicle that is extremely simple to steal (you can unlock everything with a screwdriver), to protect it I use both a pedal lock, a secret second key and a steering wheel lock.
Will it defeat a determined thief or a team of thieves? No way. However it will put off most opportunists and slow down a more experienced thief enough that they may choose another target.
Apparently these days it’s sufficient car security simply to have a manual transmission. :D
I live in the UK. Almost anyone that can drive a vehicle knows how to change gears.
And even still, whenever I or a friend has hired a locksmith, they try for 5-10 minutes with no success and drill thru the lock destroying it.
That is to make it look like the job is hard
Or to sell you an overpriced lock they conveniently have for sale and in stock in their vehicle.
> overpriced lock they conveniently have for sale and in stock in their vehicle
I object to the word overpriced in this context. It costs a lot of money to keep locks, tools, and other spare parts in a vehicle (including the cost of the vehicle). If you need a lock now and they have one it should cost a lot more than if you need a lock in 6 months and can wait for the factory to get around to making it. When you call their locks overpriced you are failing to understand the costs and value of having a part on hand.
I object to locksmiths that drill out consumer-grade locks you buy from Home Depot, instead of picking them.
Maybe some of them are selling normal-price locks, but people don't call a locksmith to drill out their lock when they can borrow their neighbor's drill.
They either can't pick an easy lock or they're scamming people.
Don't know why you are being downvoted because it's true. Lots of people wouldn't try to break past a lock but if you leave a door open many people would fall for the temptation.
If a lock takes more than 20 seconds to break it’s basically Fort Knox
No one would be surprised if you showed that you could cut a hole in pretty much any normal door given the right cutting tool. Yet people seem to act surprised and betrayed to learn that a normal lock can be picked or broken given the right tool.
And that's fair and reasonable. Of course you can cut a hole in a door. Everyone capable of forming thoughts on the subject has seen someone use a saw at some point in their life. However, locks greatly exaggerate their abilities, to the point you can forgive someone for believing that they actually mean them.
I just now went to masterlock.com, clicked HOME & PERSONAL > View All Products, and picked the very first product[0]. It says:
> The 4-pin cylinder prevents picking and the dual locking levers provide resistance against prying and hammering.
The very first thing it says is that it prevents picking. To someone who isn't familiar with LPL, and who doesn't want to have someone pick their lock, this seems like a great product. It prevents picking! And it must, because otherwise it would be illegal to say that, right? But alas, it does not, in fact, prevent picking.
Compare that to a random product page for a household front door[1] that says "Steel security plate in the frame helps to resist forced entry" and "Reinforced lock area provides strength and security for door hardware", which indicates that this might be a strong door, but doesn't claim that it "prevents someone kicking it in". It helps to resist forced entry, but doesn't say that it prevents it.
[0]https://www.masterlock.com/products/product/130D
[1]https://www.homedepot.com/p/Masonite-36-in-x-80-in-Premium-6...
Very good points. Nobody can even legally claim Vitamin XYZ prevents cancer/etc even if the lack of it causes such.
Big Lock needs to be taken to task…
> No one would be surprised if you showed that you could cut a hole in pretty much any normal door
The definition of “normal” varies by region. In European cities, it means a pretty heavy door of multiple layers of steel (and pretty unpleasant stuff in the middle) that would probably take 15 minutes of deafeningly loud cutting with a circular saw. I understand the standard for US suburbs is much lower (as it might as well be, given windows exist and the walls aren’t all that sturdy either).
A very long time ago I worked in an office building that had several suites of offices. One of them was a biotechnics company that did things like genetic analysis of farmed fish for selective breeding, massively commercially sensitive stuff. They had a "secure document store" built within their suite, with a thick door made of 19mm ply layers either side of a 6mm steel plate, welded to a full-length hinge, which was in turn welded to a 25mm steel tubing frame, with big long brackets bolted into the brick work of the exterior wall on one side and a steel beam on the other. One key in the possession of the CIO, one in the possession of the CEO. CEO was at a fish farm in Norway. CIO was in the office, getting paperwork out of the safe in the secure room, got a phone call, stepped out of the room to get a better signal, slam <CLICK> <KACHUNK> as six spring-loaded bolts about as thick as your thumb pegged the door shut.
Rude words.
Can't get a locksmith that can pick that particular Ingersoll lock. Can't get a replacement key because the certificate is in the room, and you'd have to drive down to England to get it. Can't jemmy the door open, it's too strong.
Wait.
There's a guy who parks an old Citroën in the car park, I bet he has tools, doesn't he work for that video company downstairs? Let's ask him.
So yeah it took about ten seconds to get in to the secure room. I cut a hatch through the plasterboard with a Stanley knife, recovered the keys, taped the plasterboard back in place, and - the time-consuming bit - positioned their office fridge so no-one could see it.
A swift appointment with an interior decorator was made by a certain C-level exec, and a day or two later there was a cooler with about 25kg of assorted kinds of salmon and a bottle of whisky left in my edit suite.
> They had a "secure document store" built within their suite, with a thick door made of 19mm ply layers either side of a 6mm steel plate, welded to a full-length hinge, which was in turn welded to a 25mm steel tubing frame, with big long brackets bolted into the brick work of the exterior wall on one side and a steel beam on the other.
Wow, that sounds like a pretty secure entry! I wonder how they secured the walls, that’s a lot of steel plate, enough to require structural reinforc—
> So yeah it took about ten seconds to get in to the secure room. I cut a hatch through the plasterboard with a Stanley knife, recovered the keys, taped the plasterboard back in place, and - the time-consuming bit - positioned their office fridge so no-one could see it.
Haha, that was my guess. This is like constructing a safe with a super heavy reinforced steel door on the front and construction paper on the sides and top! He could’ve kicked his way through 5/8” (prolly 16mm to you lot) drywall ;) Your solution was a lot cleaner and you earned that tasty reward!
Hah, I love this sort of story. Recently I was on site and we needed some electrical as-built drawings. They’d been stashed in a tool box, which was locked (and pretty well designed to protect the padlock from bolt cutters / angle grinders). Unfortunately one of the guys had taken the key with him and it was now a two hour plane flight away. They already tried and failed to cut the lock, and were getting an angle grinder to just cut in through the lid (it was ~3mm steel sheet, so hardly impenetrable, but destroying the toolbox would not have been ideal) when I pulled the pin out of the hinge and recovered the drawings that way.
Turns out watching Pirates of the Caribbean wasn’t a waste of time after all. ;)
If you hadn't been there to fish them out of the situation, they would have been boned to a scale they weren't prepared to deal with. You deserved the reward for getting them off the hook.
To think I usually gotta go on reddit to fish for puns.
drum_sting.wav
I know it's OT but I wanna know what your old Citroën was. My first car was an S1 BX. Plasticky 80s goodness. I know it's not everybody's idea of a classic (at least in Australia where Citroëns aren't particularly common) but I loved it.
At the time I had a 1989 XM 2.0, but at various times I've had a couple of CXes, several XMs, a couple of GSAs, a BX briefly, and an AX GT.
One of the XMs was the 3-litre 24-valve one which would sit comfortably at twice the legal limit, with the only real difference being the stereo had to be a couple of notches louder and the trees and road signs came up twice as fast. Oh, and the trip computer showed an astounding 8MPG - you wouldn't be doing 147mph for long because you've got less than an hour of fuel in the tank at that speed.
The AX GT was the carby one, basically their 950cc hatchback with the 1.4 out of a BX dropped in and a lumpy cam and twin-choke 2x32mm Weber carb. It was a little pocket-size tin of hooliganism.
The CXes were probably the most refined of the lot. Look up DIRAVI steering - fully powered, no mechanical connection between the steering wheel and road wheels when it's working normally.
Our uncle had a CX when we were kids. When he would visit we loved waiting in the driveway for him to start it so we can watch the air suspension engage and lift the car a good foot up.
Hydropneumatic suspension :-) There's a hydraulic pump about the size of a coffee cup driven off the end of the camshaft, which provides power to the suspension, braking system, and steering.
The suspension has no springs or shock absorbers - there's a "sphere" screwed into the end of each suspension cylinder with a bubble of nitrogen trapped by a rubber sheet that acts as a spring, and a set of spring-loaded valves kind of like the ones in a shock absorber piston to set the damping rate.
For the brakes, the hydraulic pump fed the ABS block through a shuttle valve under the pedal. When you press the pedal it does not move! Or, hardly at all. I takes a little getting used to and the brakes feel really harsh until you realise you don't need to welly it down hard - just gently touch it. The back brakes use pressure from the rear suspension, so they're more effective the heavier the car is.
The steering is amazing. When the engine is running the road wheels and steering wheel are not really connected. There's a linkage through a shuttle valve and when you turn the steering wheel it acts as a servo, with the wheels being moved entirely by hydraulic pressure. The Danfoss valves in normal power steering systems work a bit like this but they use a bendy spring, and the hydraulics only "help".
To make it respond properly at speed there was a heart-shaped cam in the steering box, with a sprung piston pushed into it by hydraulic pressure from a speed governor on the gearbox. The faster you go, the more pressure on the piston, and the harder the spring presses a roller into the cam. At idle with the car stationary you can move the steering wheel and it'll spring back to the middle by itself, and at 70mph you can barely move the steering wheel at all.
It's really sensitive and the first time you drive one you find yourself zig-zagging down the road until you get used to just leaving your fingertips on the rim of the wheel and basically just touching the side you want it to turn to.
They're not terribly fast but you can gobble up the miles surprisingly quickly, and I've never driven anything where you arrived so relaxed.
That is amazing, thank you for this note!
Not OP but my dad drove a CX for a while, but the real treat was our friend's DS.
Ahh, the classic Kool-Aid Man attack.
Right - the quality of your locks matter a lot less if your average 5-year-old tee-baller can through brick through the wind and climb in. One always needs to consider their threat model when considering what security to invest in getting.
Bang on. LPL himself uses a slightly modified Kwikset lock. The modification seizes the lock if someone tries to pick it. I'm the video, he says it isn't to stop all break-ins, but to stop non-destructive break-ins.
So a tamper-evident system not a (particularly) tamper-resistant one.
It's like we forget rocks can easily go through windows.
Bought my teenage son a couple lock picking kits, he's picked almost every single lock we have in our house.
I then picked up a sizable rock, and told him I could get into the house faster than he could. He didn't understand for a few moments, but the lesson was learned.
And if you try to put bars in the window; you'll have a really bad day if your house catches fire!
Same with a moad full of piranhas, it's not fun to fall in by accident :)
Best and cheapest option is a dog, or simply giving up.
Dog is not the cheapest option. The amount of work that goes into taking care of a dog is quite substantial. I know from experience. While many/most people do not mind doing the work/expense, some of us prefer cats because they are a lot less work, among other reasons. I do however admit that cats suck at scaring away intruders.
A large dog is one of the few things that can actually prevent most break-ins.
Story time: There was a serial killer in CA a few decades ago. The police mentioned he doesn't attack homes with dogs, next victim had a small dog. Next the police mentioned he doesn't attack homes with medium or large dogs, next victim had a 30lb dog. Next the police mentioned he doesn't attack homes with large dogs. His next victim didn't have a dog. If its 80+lbs, very few people will mess with them and they will love you forever.
Best and cheapest option is a dog, decent insurance, and off site backups that regularly get restores tested.
And maybe a little bit of not getting too attached to "stuff" - there's very little stuff that's truly irreplaceable. I'd miss my first guitar if my house was robbed and they took it or if my place burnt down. I'd miss the HiFi gear I bought in 1988 and still use, and maybe my modded espresso machine. But I'd get over that loss and my sentimental attraction to those things just fine, especially after I'd replaced then with my insurance settlement.
Most of the world don't construct their homes out of flammable materials, so the risk of the entire place going up in flames is quite low. In some places your home is uninsurable if you dont have burglar bars on all windows.
Regarding dogs: some organophosphate mixed into minced meat and lobbed through your fence/gate/open window is an instant and quiet way to get rid of a dog - personal experience taught me this lesson.
Or "diversify", basically don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Can be done at any scale too, from storing backup copies of important documents at your parents house to buying a few apartments in Indonesia.
Reminds me of high school when people were buying expensive locks for their lockers. These locks, no matter how tough, all still locked onto a flimsy 1.5mm steel hasp that you could bend with your fingers.
The difference here is that cutting a hole in a door is a destructive operation, like applying bolt cutters to a padlock. Lockpicking just operates the lock as designed.
The analogy is probably closer to someone entering your home by pushing the doorframe open so that the door opens without unlocking the lock, or that many automatic doors can be opened by spraying some compressed air through a thin sliver, triggering the internal door sensors. Both are feasible in practice, leave little evidence behind if done well, and do actually surprise a lot of people.
In this case, the right tool is an empty can and scissors
Are there any that are truly secure?
Folks that really care about security go for tamper evidence.
For example you can get a filing cabinet which has a lock and a counter that ticks every time it is opened. You pair it with a clipboard where you note the counter count, why you opened it and sign.
It can be picked, that can't be avoided. But the act of opening it creates a trail which can be detected. Adding a false clipboard entry is detected by subsequent users, there typically aren't many people with access.
Determining that you have a breach allows it to be investigated, mitigated. The lock is an important part of that, but it isn't perfectly secure so you manage that flaw.
Of course filing cabinets are getting rare and replaced by digital document stores, with their own auditing and issues.
Nothing is secure against an oxyacetylene torch.
But if that's not the threat you are trying to protect against, there are locks that are sufficiently secure that picking or other "low-impact" defeat attempts are considered pretty much pointless. Abloy protec2 comes to mind.
The Canadian Mint in Ottawa has a rather impressive large gold bar on display in the gift shop for people to lift and take photos with. It's not in a case or anything. It's chained down with a Protec padlock - and there's a cop a few feet away to deal with you trying something un-subtle.
I think it's a pretty good endorsement for Abloy.
To me that sounds more like a good endorsement for having a guy legally authorized to use force against you standing guard. Any old padlock is probably safe when a uniformed agent of the state with weapons of varying lethality is standing next to it.
Hopefully it's a well paid guy, or I wouldn't be surprised if they helped the bar disappear for how much gold that is.
> Nothing is secure against an oxyacetylene torch.
Can't be stuck if it's runny.
>Nothing is secure against an oxyacetylene torch.
I want to build a front door with reactive-explosive armor. The team might get through the door, but not the guy with the cutting torch.
pretty sure trophy systems are generally not legal in any jurisdiction
If there's a guy trying to go through my door with a cutting torch, "legal" is way, way over at that point.
You don't even have to go that far. Firefighters have core pulling kits that take care of 90% of all locks in 2 minutes tops. And for most other locks, the thing holding the lock tends to be less of an issue than the lock.
I had an Abloy Protec2 malfunction while locked (PSA don't use them for key-only sashlocks) and the locksmith drilled it out in ~10 seconds. That is the last time I spend that kind of money on a lock!
Add metal for extra fun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_lance
If you want to reply, check this accounts post history and decide if you think it worth it.
Huh?
Yep! Or a plasma torch!
Many locks fail quickly with just an angle grinder and a cut-off wheel. (as you can see on Storage Wars)
Doesn't even need to go as far as using power tools.
Every lock I've been unable to pick (usually due to the fact that it's a pile of rust) has been susceptible to bolt-cutters. Big lock? Bigger cutters. Still cheaper than an angle-grinder.
Not in the sense of "can't be opened without the key".
Good locks buy you two things: Deterrence (maybe), and a set minimum of time and noise requirements to bypass them. If your lock reputably takes 3 minutes to pick or a Ramset gun to blast them open, make sure your guard comes by every two minutes, and otherwise stays in earshot.
Also 3) intrusion detection.
It's obvious to the owner and the whole world that an intrusion has occurred if the door is sawed open or the lock is cut off. It's nice to know your home has been broken into vs. some of your jewelry is gone and you don't know whether to blame your teenager, a relative, someone who did work on your house since you last checked, etc.
Photos of your sawed open door will probably help in your insurance claim too. Telling your assessor "the cops say they might have picked the lock" isn't something I'd want to rely on to get my claim approved.
Assa Abloy’s Cliq (electromechanical) keys aren’t able to be picked as far as I know (I could definitely be wrong!), the local international airport uses them to secure doors. The keys aren’t cheap, we have to put up a several hundred dollar deposit when checking them out from airport security for projects. These sorts of locks are useful in places with 24-hour operations or in public spaces that lead to private spaces, an unpickable lock falls to a drill pretty quickly if that’s an option.
Virtually any lock can be destroyed with tools and most doors/walls can be busted through with enough effort and equipment. I think the airport police would notice that, though ;)
It depends on what "secure" means. Any lock can be destroyed with tools. Most locks can be broken with a big pair of bolt cutters, a drill, or, failing that, melting.
If secure means "without leaving evidence of tampering," things get a lot more interesting, but that has narrow practical use cases outside of stuff like espionage. Once you're in this space, we can start talking about how difficult something can be without specialized tools. But now we're leaving "I am protecting my stuff" territory and entering "this is just a sport and we're agreeing on a ruleset" territory.
There are a couple of lock designs out there that I don't think anybody's successfully ever picked. The ones that first come to mind are a couple of the "smart" electronic locks. Many of those are junk, but a few are very well thought out.
Secure against what? You might be surprised at what a wench and a truck can pull / destroy. If that fails, there are shotguns and also explosives, jackhammers and the like.
There are always assumptions built into lock design. A simple lock is very secure if a fence is jumpable, most people will jump the fence rather than mess with a lock.
Even a complex lock will never be secure for national secrets (like nuclear missiles), you need to just assign guards. Locks exist but are basically a formality (IIRC, many tanks and airplanes are left unlocked because all the security posture is with the military and the lock itself is too much of a hassle for logistics).
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Fort Knox itself was designed to be safe from Nazi invasion. If the Nazis invaded New York City, they won't find any of the governments gold. The 'lock' in this case is the miles and miles of geography the Nazis would have to navigate before reaching Fort Knox.
"In 1933, the U.S. suspended gold convertibility and gold exports. In the following year, the U.S. dollar was devalued when the gold price was fixed at $35 per troy ounce. After the U.S. dollar devaluation, so much gold began to flow into the United States that the country’s gold reserves quadrupled within eight years. Notice that this is several years before the outbreak of World War II and predates a large trade surplus in the late 1940s. [...] In 1930, the U.S. controlled about 40% of the world’s gold reserves, but by 1950, the U.S. controlled nearly two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves."
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/f...
> what a wench and a truck can pull / destroy.
According to legend, a wench can destroy a whole city state (Troy)!
Evil villains trying to destroy the world know it too, it's why they hire so many wenchmen.
> If the Nazis invaded New York City, they won't find any of the governments gold.
Is that because it’s not actually in Fort Knox? :P
At some point something else becomes the weak link, so a truly unpickable 100% secure lock is a meaningless concept.
Any lock can be forced through given the right tools and enough time.
You need to be more specific with what "truly secure" means.
Security is a practice, not a destination.
Certainly not at reasonable prices!
There's a few that are pretty good but at a certain point you can just grind off the shackle or blow the door off its hinges.
It’s similar to the idea that the only truly secure computer is sixty feet underground, encased in concrete, turned off, and ground into dust.
All the digital forensics experts I know suggest the bottom of the ocean FYI.
I can't get hacked if I live a self sufficient hermitic lifestyle in an off the grid cabin with no electric devices.
Tell that to machete-bear.
The fact that he is actually a lawyer probably helps greatly, both in terms of what he can legally do, and as a deterrence to others trying to sue.
This also works on places like HN. I will often make an argument in my normal, working class low educated redneck hick sort of writing style. People will assume I have an unsophisticated basis for my argument and are way more likely to debate me on it. They like to attack an 'easy' target and even better if they are culturally seen as different.
If I use my pretend upper well-to-do white guy rhetoric with precise and deep vocabulary, I can make claims with a lower likelihood someone will challenge it, even if they are equally well backed.
Opening a padlock by hitting it with another padlock has to be one of my favorite bits.
"This is a Master Lock XYZ. It can be opened with a Master Lock XYZ."
Same solid principle as homeopathy
this is HN; its a monad.
Great channel, and yes the ineffectiveness of nearly all commercially available locks is depressing. At best it would briefly slow down a skilled picker.