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Ask News.YC: Any other hackers out there amateur lockpickers?

14 points by ghiotion ↗ HN
I've always been fascinated with locks and lock picking, ever since high school. I got my fist set of lock picks off the internet a couple of years ago. Apparently, there's this long tradition of hackers picking locks (c.f. The MIT Lockpicking Guide) . Anyone else into this?

18 comments

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cstejerean
lockpicking is a lot of fun. I haven't been practicing much recently but I own a set of picks and live to stay up to date with the latest locks and attacks. I've been meaning to master lock bumping but never got around to it.

I'm curious if more people here are into this.

ghiotion
I wonder if lock bumping really works. I've also got a set of Auto Jigglers (btw, the police get really pissed if you have these things, so don't carry them around in public), but they don't work at all. At least, I've had no success starting or opening my own Toyota Camry.
cstejerean
With jigglers it seems to be all about probability. IIRC they only worked for american cars (and even then it might have been only older models).

Bumping OTOH seems pretty reliable. Just that I'm afraid to try it on my front door for fear of ruining the lock.

ghiotion
I've heard that about auto jigglers only working on older model cars. The set I have advertises that they work on both foreign and domestic. I think my camry is a 2002. Anything post 2000 is a dicey proposition. And obviously, they won't work on cars that have the computer chip embedded in the key. I have no idea how you'd pick one of those.

There was a woman on Click & Clack last weekend who was looking at a $2000 key replacement from Saab for her key with an embedded chip.

aleclair
Bumping does work, but not on automotive locks, as they have a different internal structure. Most lock manufacturers have come up with bump-proof or bump-resistant locks now that bumping has become more known.

That said: bumping is cheating :D

mrtron
My dad was a mechanic and long story short, he could open any vehicle in under 30 seconds with the 'jimmy sticks'.

I worked with him a lot during my youth, and I am decent at it. However, the way new cars are designed it is getting a lot more difficult to do this, so most people will pull at your window now around the edge and slip down basically a coathanger to hit the unlock button.

xirium
In the book Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, he described his hobby of cracking combination safes.
tel
Lock picking and safe cracking are pretty much wet equivalents to computer cracking. It's a very hackerish hobby as long as it's done in a mature, non-destructive way.

I don't put a lot of money into it, but working on new locks is a nice way to kill time and relax my mind.

wlievens
A colleague of mine confessed to unlocking bike locks for fun during his student years.
st3fan
Here in The Netherlands there is Toool, http://www.toool.nl. They are an officially registered sport club with contests and 'practice'. I think most of their members are computer hackers too. It's all perfectly legal here also btw.
aggieben
I bought a cheap set of picks and got a copy of the "MIT Guide to Lockpicking" and tried to get into it. It was kinda fun at first, but I never had much success. How long do you have to work at it before obtaining any proficiency? All I ever managed to do was bend my picks.
ghiotion
I got proficient at the scrape method after about a week. Generally, this method involves more luck than skill and can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 15 mins to pick a lock. The pin-at-a-time method is much more difficult. I'm still not super good at that approach, but I don't practice as regularly as I should. They've got these clear plastic training sets you can purchase so you can see the tumblers move up and down. I never bought one, but I can see how they'd be useful: http://www.lockpickshop.com/PSTNX.html
brk
Yes, I'm one.

I almost always have my HPC lockpick set with me, although there are really only 1 or 2 tools that I use regularly.

Comes in handy at times...

jmzachary
A lot of computer security and cryptography folks are into lockpicking.
dfranke
I know how to do it. I'm not very good at it.
zeke
I have half a dozen locks behind my monitor. But I made a starter kit for my niece by removing pins from four locks and gave her my picks. Need to pull another tine from the the lawn rake and make a new pick.
DaniFong
Many of the hackers in the Felten group at Princeton (www.freedom-to-tinker.com/) are good lockpicks.

One of my cofounders is one.

Once I was locked out of my apartment and knocked from door to door to find a coat hanger to try my luck. I wasn't terribly successful, though.

brianmckenzie
I'm into it, a little bit. I'm good enough that I never get locked out of my apartment, but I couldn't crack a safe or anything.

There's a weird and compelling sensation you get when you successfully pick a lock you've never picked before. Especially if there's some practical goal involved.