

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

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?
======
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.

------
xirium
In the book Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, he described his hobby of
cracking combination safes.

------
wlievens
A colleague of mine confessed to unlocking bike locks for fun during his
student years.

------
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.

------
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.

------
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>

------
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.

------
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.

------
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.

------
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.

