7 ms·

Illegal Engineering

232 points by bowyakka 14y ago

danso 14y ago
Great piece (or at least what I skimmed through). However, I think this hypothesis is not well-founded: > I suspect the main reason for the disappearance of the craftsman criminal is simply that there are fewer and fewer people with the practical skills and confidence to even try to break into a safe. Engineering apprenticeships have been decimated, and even the old metalwork shops in schools have gone, replaced by ‘craft, design and technology’, which seems to mainly involve making things of cardboard. As he mentions later in the piece, the rewards just aren't that great. Moreover, I think surveillance technology has reached a point where getting access to the safe is harder than cracking the safe itself. And that if you have the means to bypass the surveillance, then you have the sophistication needed to bypass the safe's physical locks without traditional safe-cracking.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  For a year or so in college, I worked at night for a security firm. I spent several months working in a bank's operation center, watching the camera feeds from the branches overnight. Anyway, for some reason part of the training for that job mentioned that the average bank robbery at the time grossed only about $1500 (about $4000 now). Plus the robbers would almost certainly be on video and the FBI was automatically involved. And with dye packs (bundles of cash that explode with brightly colored dye) and other measures... Well, robbing a bank was a pretty stupid plan. The other months of that job involved patrolling the HQ for a phone company, including the central computer rooms. One day we got a memo about a well-known hacker group that had dressed up in suits and just walked into the building because the daytime guards weren't checking IDs. Ha.
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    It is a well known social hack to simply put a good suit on, walk up to people like you belong there, make them feel important and then get them to do whatever it is you want.
    - wlesieutre 14y ago
      You can go anywhere in life if you look serious and carry a clipboard
      - excuse-me 14y ago
        If you have a suit + high-vis vest + hard hat you can take over the world !
      - J3L2404 14y ago
        And a full size video camera. I've been issued temporary press passes at a Republican fundraiser by signing out a professional grade camera at the local cable company (after a four hour course), telling security we were with CCTV (they didn't blink), and CNN let us use some of their lights!
        joahua 14y ago
        Not sure whether you were aware of this, but CCTV are a real network - it's China's state owned TV company, which also produces global and English language content - so saying you're from a global TV network is probably not that blink-worthy.
        krishnakv 14y ago
        cue the theme music for "Burn Notice" ... :-)
    - CamperBob2 14y ago
      Yes, this is known as "Management."
  - Spooky23 14y ago
    When I worked at a fast food joint in a mall, our boss had us move the safe after the mall closed to bring it to a new location. Picture two 19 year olds rolling a safe on a handtruck to a rental van parked in front of a the mall entrance at 11PM. The mall rent a cop came up to us and yells "What the hell do you think you are doing?" My coworker snaps "WTF do you think? We've moving the safe -- get that door for us!". He did, and we rolled the safe into the van, then headed for our cars.
  - amalag 14y ago
    In the DC area a year or two ago, two bank robbers impersonated the armored car company and took money from two banks in the same day. People didn't recognize them, they said the other guy was off today. I don't think they were caught.
    - amalag 14y ago
      http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2008/01/13/bank-robber-dresses-up-as-a-brinks-driver-clueless-bank-employees-give-him-100000/ http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2008/01/13/bank-robber-dresses-up...
  - meddlepal 14y ago
    This was really the opposite experience I had when I was a teller in a bank. The amounts were similar but the chance of getting caught was slim. We had a binder of local bank roberies that we updated when the person was caught. It was usually rare for a person to get caught unless they were really dumb about te roberery (told someone such as friend they thought they could trust or their license was recorded) or they got greedy and came back several times. The banks never pursued the robbers very hard because the money was all insured. If a robber was smart he would tell the teller to not put a dye pack in the money and we were always instructed to follow those kinds of orders ... There was no reason to be a hero. Also if you ever want to rob a bank don't threaten that you have a weapon ... Armed robbery is a much more severe punishment than unarmed.
    - tsotha 14y ago
      The FBI says the modern bank robber walks in, gives the teller a note, takes the money and leaves within 90 seconds. He never carries a weapon and gets less than $2k, but if he's reasonably smart he can rob 30-40 banks before being caught. That's terrible pay, when you think about it. You're always on the road, and you spend a couple days on each bank. You might as well sell insurance for a living.
      - waterlesscloud 14y ago
        The key here is that you would eventually get caught. Then what? Those years add up fast.
        tsotha 14y ago
        Oh, I agree. The point was even if you don't get caught you're not doing that much better than someone with a job.
      - Someone 14y ago
        At least some economists agree: http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/economists-demonstrate-exactly-why-bank-robbery-is-a-bad-idea/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/economists-demonstrat... I think robbers know that, too. Bank robbing is old school. Robbing Gas pumps also has gotten too risky to be worth the trouble; they keep way less money around than they used to and they have video recorders everywhere. So, nowadays, your best bet is mom and pop shops, at least that is what I read in the papers :-)
  - pacaro 14y ago
    I think that there may just be easier targets. A few years back I spent a night in jail (don't ask), in the same cell there was a guy who was quite happy to talk about his M.O., he specialized in lifting the floor safes from small strip mall fast food joints (places like Subway). Apparently they don't keep much in them overnight, but because they close long after banks do, it's just easier to keep the till float and evening takings in the floor overnight. He gave a startlingly detailed description (he was in withdrawal and just wanted any distraction) of how quickly and easily he could get into the unit, find the safe, pull it out of the floor and be out of there in just a few minutes. He claimed between $1K and $3K was usually in there... at which point why bother with pulling over a bank. In his own words he got caught because he was "too successful, I was taking so many drugs I got stupid, the cops pulled me over with safes and paraphernalia in the trunk"
pja 14y ago
Love a bit of Tim Hunkin. Anyone reading HackerNews would probably enjoy his television series from the early 90s: The Secret Life of Machines. Details, including links to download locations (bittorrent for preference I'd imagine) here: http://www.timhunkin.com/control/n_tv_index.htm http://www.timhunkin.com/control/n_tv_index.htm
- slug 14y ago
  That show is awesome, be warned if you download it you will spend the weekend glued to the computer watching it :) I wish there was something more recent in the same vein.
- simonsquiff 14y ago
  He's amazing. I absolutely devoured his book 'Almost Everything There is to Know' as a kid, which was the collection of all his cartoons from decades at the Observer. It's now online http://www.timhunkin.com/40_rudiments_book.htm http://www.timhunkin.com/40_rudiments_book.htm but I highly recommend getting a second hand copy of the book. I must have read it cover to cover about 5 times and I think it's the source of my reputation of always knowing ridiculous random facts.
- minikrob 14y ago
  Thanks a lot for the link. As an french guy, I didn't know about him before I read this article. This was actually one of the best I've read since a long. I'll definitively look at this series, I have to see more of his work.
jedahan 14y ago
Anyone else read it aloud in his voice, pauses and all. Occasionally picturing him blowing himself up while setting the charges and all that?
- bowyakka 14y ago
  I have not, I think I must !
killa_bee 14y ago
What is the "DT" mentioned in this article? I have no prior knowledge of that acronym.
- Domenic_S 14y ago
  Perhaps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_and_Technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_and_Technology ?
  - lclarkmichalek 14y ago
    Almost certainly, given that the author seems to have significant connections to the UK.
- excuse-me 14y ago
  Design Technology - it's drawing pretty pictures (sorry `design concepts`) of what you would make if your school still had proper shop class. It is to "metal work" what "information technology" is to programming.
  - emmelaich 14y ago
    My son has just started doing Industrial Arts at school. A lot of it just seems to be dreadful spouting of design and architecture jargon.
    - excuse-me 14y ago
      But what do people want from a wheel? How do they relate to it? What colour should it be?
  - hk_kh 14y ago
    3d printers to the rescue?
- ralph 14y ago
  He refers to it again later; "Engineering apprenticeships have been decimated, and even the old metalwork shops in schools have gone, replaced by ‘craft, design and technology’, which seems to mainly involve making things of cardboard."
cafard 14y ago
In the past week I have been reading _Essays Ancient and Modern_ by Bernard Knox. In the autobiographical introduction, he writes of being trained for infiltration behind German lines in WW II, including a class with a master safe cracker, then an inmate of Pentonville Prison. Knox flunked, as having insufficiently sensitive fingers, and the safe cracker advised him to stick to dynamite. As matters worked out, Knox never had the chance to practice burglary, though he saw a good deal of action.
roryokane 14y ago
From the title “Illegal Engineering”, I thought this would be about titling yourself a “Professional Engineer” in Canada and similar countries, where calling yourself that without a professional engineering license is illegal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_engineering#Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_eng... I don’t mind reading about safe-cracking, but it’s a little disappointing that the article never talks about when safe-cracking is illegal, or how specifically it relates to engineering. The title doesn’t fit.
- epo 14y ago
  If you insist on everything conforming to your exceedingly narrow interpretation you must find life very difficult. I would stick to reading law books and phone books.
  - roryokane 14y ago
    Your reply greatly exaggerated how much I dislike the title. It was rude of you to attribute a straw-man worldview to me and then snidely insult it. Your reply implied that I did something like call for the deletion of the article because of its title, though I had even stated that “I don’t mind reading about safe-cracking”.
devopstom 14y ago
I hadn't previously seen this video, but it's a great insight into his slot machines. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9mkhI-KB_U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9mkhI-KB_U
rdl 14y ago
I was shopping for safes a while ago. It's pretty amazing how bad the low-end safes (gun safes, in particular) are -- 12-16ga steel with some concrete. You can open one (destructively) with a heavy ax or sledge in a few minutes. Even when the door is something semi-acceptable (1/4" steel plate), it's often the only part, with the body of the safe being much lighter.
- michaelt 14y ago
  To be fair, at the bottom end of the market safes are competing against Kensington lock cables and hiding valuables on the top shelf of your wardrobe. If anyone broke into my home I assume it would be a brick through the window then in and out in five minutes grabbing any laptops, jewelery and cash rather than a planned attack with thermal lances and diamond core drills!
  - rdl 14y ago
    Yeah, I just feel a particularly high level of responsibility when it comes to securing weapons. In addition to the financial loss, you've got moral and potential legal liability for how they're used. (I think only civil, and a lot of that would be addressed by taking reasonable precautions to secure them, plus reporting theft in a timely manner).
    - tsotha 14y ago
      I'm in the same boat as you. I would like to have a safe a thief couldn't open easily with the tools in my garage. On the other hand, my guns aren't rare or particularly high quality. A reasonably good safe will cost more than the contents.
      - rdl 14y ago
        The generally accepted solution to that problem is to buy more guns, so as to raise the value protected and thus justify a Graffunder or ISM safe.
    - gbog 14y ago
perlpimp 14y ago
"In the last twenty years, the craft of safe cracking has tragically declined." No kidding, bank accounts with proliferation of various ways money is transferred and stored - budding criminals and kids who want to play mischief - look to the internet now. Cracking safes is so quaint.
hk_kh 14y ago
In the article there are some references to medieval locks. I was impressed to see early roman (Pompeian and Herculaneum) era locks. If anyone is interested this query served me https://www.google.com/search?q=ancient+%22roman+OR+pompeian%22+key+lock https://www.google.com/search?q=ancient+%22roman+OR+pompeian...

232 points by bowyakka 14y ago

danso 14y ago

Great piece (or at least what I skimmed through). However, I think this hypothesis is not well-founded: > I suspect the main reason for the disappearance of the craftsman criminal is simply that there are fewer and fewer people with the practical skills and confidence to even try to break into a safe. Engineering apprenticeships have been decimated, and even the old metalwork shops in schools have gone, replaced by ‘craft, design and technology’, which seems to mainly involve making things of cardboard. As he mentions later in the piece, the rewards just aren't that great. Moreover, I think surveillance technology has reached a point where getting access to the safe is harder than cracking the safe itself. And that if you have the means to bypass the surveillance, then you have the sophistication needed to bypass the safe's physical locks without traditional safe-cracking.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
For a year or so in college, I worked at night for a security firm. I spent several months working in a bank's operation center, watching the camera feeds from the branches overnight. Anyway, for some reason part of the training for that job mentioned that the average bank robbery at the time grossed only about $1500 (about $4000 now). Plus the robbers would almost certainly be on video and the FBI was automatically involved. And with dye packs (bundles of cash that explode with brightly colored dye) and other measures... Well, robbing a bank was a pretty stupid plan. The other months of that job involved patrolling the HQ for a phone company, including the central computer rooms. One day we got a memo about a well-known hacker group that had dressed up in suits and just walked into the building because the daytime guards weren't checking IDs. Ha.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  It is a well known social hack to simply put a good suit on, walk up to people like you belong there, make them feel important and then get them to do whatever it is you want.
  - wlesieutre 14y ago
    You can go anywhere in life if you look serious and carry a clipboard
    - excuse-me 14y ago
      If you have a suit + high-vis vest + hard hat you can take over the world !
    - J3L2404 14y ago
      And a full size video camera. I've been issued temporary press passes at a Republican fundraiser by signing out a professional grade camera at the local cable company (after a four hour course), telling security we were with CCTV (they didn't blink), and CNN let us use some of their lights!
      - joahua 14y ago
        Not sure whether you were aware of this, but CCTV are a real network - it's China's state owned TV company, which also produces global and English language content - so saying you're from a global TV network is probably not that blink-worthy.
      - krishnakv 14y ago
        cue the theme music for "Burn Notice" ... :-)
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    Yes, this is known as "Management."
- Spooky23 14y ago
  When I worked at a fast food joint in a mall, our boss had us move the safe after the mall closed to bring it to a new location. Picture two 19 year olds rolling a safe on a handtruck to a rental van parked in front of a the mall entrance at 11PM. The mall rent a cop came up to us and yells "What the hell do you think you are doing?" My coworker snaps "WTF do you think? We've moving the safe -- get that door for us!". He did, and we rolled the safe into the van, then headed for our cars.
- amalag 14y ago
  In the DC area a year or two ago, two bank robbers impersonated the armored car company and took money from two banks in the same day. People didn't recognize them, they said the other guy was off today. I don't think they were caught.
  - amalag 14y ago
    http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2008/01/13/bank-robber-dresses-up-as-a-brinks-driver-clueless-bank-employees-give-him-100000/ http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2008/01/13/bank-robber-dresses-up...
- meddlepal 14y ago
  This was really the opposite experience I had when I was a teller in a bank. The amounts were similar but the chance of getting caught was slim. We had a binder of local bank roberies that we updated when the person was caught. It was usually rare for a person to get caught unless they were really dumb about te roberery (told someone such as friend they thought they could trust or their license was recorded) or they got greedy and came back several times. The banks never pursued the robbers very hard because the money was all insured. If a robber was smart he would tell the teller to not put a dye pack in the money and we were always instructed to follow those kinds of orders ... There was no reason to be a hero. Also if you ever want to rob a bank don't threaten that you have a weapon ... Armed robbery is a much more severe punishment than unarmed.
  - tsotha 14y ago
    The FBI says the modern bank robber walks in, gives the teller a note, takes the money and leaves within 90 seconds. He never carries a weapon and gets less than $2k, but if he's reasonably smart he can rob 30-40 banks before being caught. That's terrible pay, when you think about it. You're always on the road, and you spend a couple days on each bank. You might as well sell insurance for a living.
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      The key here is that you would eventually get caught. Then what? Those years add up fast.
      - tsotha 14y ago
        Oh, I agree. The point was even if you don't get caught you're not doing that much better than someone with a job.
    - Someone 14y ago
      At least some economists agree: http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/economists-demonstrate-exactly-why-bank-robbery-is-a-bad-idea/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/economists-demonstrat... I think robbers know that, too. Bank robbing is old school. Robbing Gas pumps also has gotten too risky to be worth the trouble; they keep way less money around than they used to and they have video recorders everywhere. So, nowadays, your best bet is mom and pop shops, at least that is what I read in the papers :-)
- pacaro 14y ago
  I think that there may just be easier targets. A few years back I spent a night in jail (don't ask), in the same cell there was a guy who was quite happy to talk about his M.O., he specialized in lifting the floor safes from small strip mall fast food joints (places like Subway). Apparently they don't keep much in them overnight, but because they close long after banks do, it's just easier to keep the till float and evening takings in the floor overnight. He gave a startlingly detailed description (he was in withdrawal and just wanted any distraction) of how quickly and easily he could get into the unit, find the safe, pull it out of the floor and be out of there in just a few minutes. He claimed between $1K and $3K was usually in there... at which point why bother with pulling over a bank. In his own words he got caught because he was "too successful, I was taking so many drugs I got stupid, the cops pulled me over with safes and paraphernalia in the trunk"

pja 14y ago

Love a bit of Tim Hunkin. Anyone reading HackerNews would probably enjoy his television series from the early 90s: The Secret Life of Machines. Details, including links to download locations (bittorrent for preference I'd imagine) here: http://www.timhunkin.com/control/n_tv_index.htm http://www.timhunkin.com/control/n_tv_index.htm

slug 14y ago
That show is awesome, be warned if you download it you will spend the weekend glued to the computer watching it :) I wish there was something more recent in the same vein.
simonsquiff 14y ago
He's amazing. I absolutely devoured his book 'Almost Everything There is to Know' as a kid, which was the collection of all his cartoons from decades at the Observer. It's now online http://www.timhunkin.com/40_rudiments_book.htm http://www.timhunkin.com/40_rudiments_book.htm but I highly recommend getting a second hand copy of the book. I must have read it cover to cover about 5 times and I think it's the source of my reputation of always knowing ridiculous random facts.
minikrob 14y ago
Thanks a lot for the link. As an french guy, I didn't know about him before I read this article. This was actually one of the best I've read since a long. I'll definitively look at this series, I have to see more of his work.

jedahan 14y ago

Anyone else read it aloud in his voice, pauses and all. Occasionally picturing him blowing himself up while setting the charges and all that?

bowyakka 14y ago
I have not, I think I must !

killa_bee 14y ago

What is the "DT" mentioned in this article? I have no prior knowledge of that acronym.

Domenic_S 14y ago
Perhaps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_and_Technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_and_Technology ?
- lclarkmichalek 14y ago
  Almost certainly, given that the author seems to have significant connections to the UK.
excuse-me 14y ago
Design Technology - it's drawing pretty pictures (sorry `design concepts`) of what you would make if your school still had proper shop class. It is to "metal work" what "information technology" is to programming.
- emmelaich 14y ago
  My son has just started doing Industrial Arts at school. A lot of it just seems to be dreadful spouting of design and architecture jargon.
  - excuse-me 14y ago
    But what do people want from a wheel? How do they relate to it? What colour should it be?
- hk_kh 14y ago
  3d printers to the rescue?
ralph 14y ago
He refers to it again later; "Engineering apprenticeships have been decimated, and even the old metalwork shops in schools have gone, replaced by ‘craft, design and technology’, which seems to mainly involve making things of cardboard."

cafard 14y ago

In the past week I have been reading _Essays Ancient and Modern_ by Bernard Knox. In the autobiographical introduction, he writes of being trained for infiltration behind German lines in WW II, including a class with a master safe cracker, then an inmate of Pentonville Prison. Knox flunked, as having insufficiently sensitive fingers, and the safe cracker advised him to stick to dynamite. As matters worked out, Knox never had the chance to practice burglary, though he saw a good deal of action.

roryokane 14y ago

From the title “Illegal Engineering”, I thought this would be about titling yourself a “Professional Engineer” in Canada and similar countries, where calling yourself that without a professional engineering license is illegal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_engineering#Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_eng... I don’t mind reading about safe-cracking, but it’s a little disappointing that the article never talks about when safe-cracking is illegal, or how specifically it relates to engineering. The title doesn’t fit.

epo 14y ago
If you insist on everything conforming to your exceedingly narrow interpretation you must find life very difficult. I would stick to reading law books and phone books.
- roryokane 14y ago
  Your reply greatly exaggerated how much I dislike the title. It was rude of you to attribute a straw-man worldview to me and then snidely insult it. Your reply implied that I did something like call for the deletion of the article because of its title, though I had even stated that “I don’t mind reading about safe-cracking”.

devopstom 14y ago

I hadn't previously seen this video, but it's a great insight into his slot machines. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9mkhI-KB_U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9mkhI-KB_U

rdl 14y ago

I was shopping for safes a while ago. It's pretty amazing how bad the low-end safes (gun safes, in particular) are -- 12-16ga steel with some concrete. You can open one (destructively) with a heavy ax or sledge in a few minutes. Even when the door is something semi-acceptable (1/4" steel plate), it's often the only part, with the body of the safe being much lighter.

michaelt 14y ago
To be fair, at the bottom end of the market safes are competing against Kensington lock cables and hiding valuables on the top shelf of your wardrobe. If anyone broke into my home I assume it would be a brick through the window then in and out in five minutes grabbing any laptops, jewelery and cash rather than a planned attack with thermal lances and diamond core drills!
- rdl 14y ago
  Yeah, I just feel a particularly high level of responsibility when it comes to securing weapons. In addition to the financial loss, you've got moral and potential legal liability for how they're used. (I think only civil, and a lot of that would be addressed by taking reasonable precautions to secure them, plus reporting theft in a timely manner).
  - tsotha 14y ago
    I'm in the same boat as you. I would like to have a safe a thief couldn't open easily with the tools in my garage. On the other hand, my guns aren't rare or particularly high quality. A reasonably good safe will cost more than the contents.
    - rdl 14y ago
      The generally accepted solution to that problem is to buy more guns, so as to raise the value protected and thus justify a Graffunder or ISM safe.
  - gbog 14y ago

perlpimp 14y ago

"In the last twenty years, the craft of safe cracking has tragically declined." No kidding, bank accounts with proliferation of various ways money is transferred and stored - budding criminals and kids who want to play mischief - look to the internet now. Cracking safes is so quaint.

hk_kh 14y ago

In the article there are some references to medieval locks. I was impressed to see early roman (Pompeian and Herculaneum) era locks. If anyone is interested this query served me https://www.google.com/search?q=ancient+%22roman+OR+pompeian%22+key+lock https://www.google.com/search?q=ancient+%22roman+OR+pompeian...