At the last two hacker conventions I have attended (Notacon and Defcon) there have been “lock picking tents” — areas set up to teach people about the art of lock picking. At their core, hackers are hackers because they are curious people that like to know how “things” work; “things” include both computer-based locks and physical, worldly locks. My guess is these lock picking areas draw a mix of people, some of who which think locks themselves are interesting, some of who are probably attracted by the “dangerous” aspect of picking locks, and some of who realize that knowing how to get out of a pair of handcuffs (regardless of how you ended up in them) might be a useful skill to know someday.
I spent five or ten minutes at the Notacon lock picking area, most of which was spent looking of people’s shoulders, watching from afar. The guys running the booth made picking the locks seem very simple. Surely it couldn’t be that easy, could it? I plunked down my $25 for a set of picks and decided to find out once I got home.
For $25, I got five picks and a torsion bar in a plastic tube along with a rolled up piece of paper. The piece of paper tells you the name of the picks and includes a bunch of words. I ditched the paper and went to YouTube where I found several videos showing the basics of lock picking. Armed with $25 worth of picks and the knowledge gleaned from a couple of YouTube videos, I set out to pick the locks on the front door of my house.
For some reason I thought picking locks would take a bit more finesse. I don’t even know what one of the picks does. One is used for bumping one pin at a time. That leaves three, all of which are classified as “rakes”. Essentially these are used like tiny little lumberjack saws. You insert them into a lock and slide them in and out while jiggling things and applying turning pressure with the torsion bar.
The first time took me about fifteen minutes. The second time took about thirty seconds. The dead bolt turned as easily as the main handle did.
Once I was able to pick the lock consistently, I performed a real world test by locking myself out of the house. It took me about two minutes that time, due to the lack of light and the fluttering moths. After everybody else went to bed I did it again, to see if I could sneak in without anybody waking up. Nobody woke up.
Sleep tight!
I’m glad your neighborhood watch didn’t call the police on you breaking in to your own house. That would’ve been odd to explain!
One night, I went over to my parents house for something. It was after they had gone to bed. I had a key, so I didn’t pick the lock. Their alarm was set though. It was making plenty of noise too. I knew the code and shut it off. The dog even came down stairs and barked.
The next morning I apologized for waking them up. Their reply? “We didn’t hear anything last night, did you really come in?”
Someone just forwarded me an e-mail that said you should keep your car keys by your nightstand so that if someone tries to break in to your house you can hit your car’s panic alarm and people will call 911 for you.
I wonder what the ratio of people hearing car alarms going off is to people who call 911 because of them. Number of car alarms I have heard going off over the past five years: eighteen billion. Number of times I have called 911 over them: zero. I guess it could scare off a burgler but … I dunno, I think I’d have a backup plan just in case.
I bought a lockpick set from a “friend” years ago. I had a lot of fun with it in college. Probably need to pull it out and practice…
I have heard the car key thing too. I think it is more about scaring somebody off vs having the police show up, like you said. The alarm company gave me a panic remote that we keep in the bedroom. I can hit arm or panic from the bedroom. I also have the chime set when anybody opens a door. Considering half the time we cannot even hear the door bell, I don’t know how good that does.
I figure if I just show up not wearing much, that’ll be enough to scare just about any burglar out of the house.
It works with my wife!
*rimshot*
While we are very happy that you decided to pick up a set of polished picks from the lockpicking village, I have to advise you to not try picking locks that you actually rely on. There is a very real risk of doing damage to a lock, which wouldn’t be very comfortable when you lock yourself out and have a bunch of heavy sleepers inside the house.
Also, don’t think that all locks are as easy as your (more than likely) used front door. Plenty of the locks we had on display have yet to be picked by anyone at the conferences we attend. I encourage anyone to explore lockpicking as an interesting and exciting hobby, but remember there is a risk of damaging a lock.
Have fun!
I’ll second the ‘have fun!’ bit. It’s a great exploring activity, but it works a lot better on locks that are not in a door. Maybe you can find some interesting locks to pick at garage sales (a lock without matching key is worthless to all other people) or make friends with your local locksmith and get some old locks for the scrap metal price. One caveat: locksmiths (especially those in the US it seems) may be afraid you are stealing their business.
Maybe there is a locksport club nearby.Check out http://toool.us/ for the US locksport organization.
Reminds me of the time I memorized the instructions off MIT’s classic “how to crack a Masterlock” site. I used to open people’s locks for fun, it takes about five minutes.
Once I had a science lab in a room with a bunch of locked drawers. For fun during a lecture I started trying to open one of them. Since it involves trying up to 100 combinations people just looked at me like “yeah right buddy, trying random numbers won’t get you anywhere”. The look on people’s faces when I managed to crack it was priceless.