7 ms·
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 qui
by jwr 1y ago
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…
- jasoncartwright 1y agoLPL is superb. He inspired me to get a lock pick kit and a few simple padlocks - a cheap and fun hobby during COVID lockdowns.
- diego898 1y agoThinking 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!
- yoz-y 1y agoI’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.
- embedding-shape 1y agoI 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.
- Y_Y 1y agoStart 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.
- jasoncartwright 1y agoI got a £50 pick set from https://x.com/martin__newton https://x.com/martin__newton https://imgur.com/a/sbXoBCK https://imgur.com/a/sbXoBCK
- jamie_ca 1y agoI 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.
- sillysaurusx 1y agoDitto. 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.
- RHSeeger 1y agoWhen 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.
- bigiain 1y agoPicking filing cabinet locks is part of the genesis of modern hacker ethos. Feynman would be proud.
- dekhn 1y agoSee also: https://www.lysator.liu.se/mit-guide/MITLockGuide.pdf https://www.lysator.liu.se/mit-guide/MITLockGuide.pdf and the book "Hackers".
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoAt 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).
- myself248 1y agoHeyyy, 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.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoI 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.classiclishi.com/about/lishi-history https://www.originallishi.com/what-are-lishi-tools https://www.originallishi.com/what-are-lishi-tools
- Buttons840 1y agoPutting the lock in lockdown I see.
- hamburglar 1y agoSame here. It also inspired me to teach my kids. Watching my nine year old daughter pick a lock warmed my subversive little heart.
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoLPL 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.
- jonhohle 1y agoI wonder if McNally knows a lawyer familiar with lock picking ;-)
- slenk 1y agoOh sweet never knew there was a connection between LPL and McNally - I just notice they always cut their shims from cans the same way
- SAI_Peregrinus 1y agoThere 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.
- slenk 1y agoWell they make it look easy I always end up cutting myself
- johnisgood 1y agoI think McNally was in at least one of his videos if I remember correctly.
- jonny_eh 1y ago> Probably not a coincidence that Covert Instruments wasn't named in the lawsuit What's the non-coincidence?
- sgerenser 1y agoThat they avoided naming the lawyer or the lawyer's company in their bogus lawsuit and instead only named the non-lawyer.
- Kye 1y agoOpening a padlock by hitting it with another padlock has to be one of my favorite bits.
- hdgvhicv 1y agoIf a lock takes more than 20 seconds to break it’s basically Fort Knox
- azinman2 1y agoAre there any that are truly secure?
- lawn 1y agoAny lock can be forced through given the right tools and enough time. You need to be more specific with what "truly secure" means.
- __loam 1y agoThere'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.
- madaxe_again 1y agoIt’s similar to the idea that the only truly secure computer is sixty feet underground, encased in concrete, turned off, and ground into dust.
- __loam 1y agoI can't get hacked if I live a self sufficient hermitic lifestyle in an off the grid cabin with no electric devices.
- madaxe_again 1y agoTell that to machete-bear.
- potato3732842 1y agoAll the digital forensics experts I know suggest the bottom of the ocean FYI.
- koolba 1y ago> 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.
- amarant 1y agoThey're also effective against incompetent thieves. Anecdotally that's a pretty high percentage of thieves you'll ward off that way.
- svachalek 1y agoExactly. 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.
- jopsen 1y agoYeah, moar burglars aren't the kind who spend 10000 hours honing their skills. People with that kind of dedication can often find gainful employment :)
- mrweasel 1y agoI 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.
- Forgeties79 1y agoYeah 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
- jihadjihad 1y agoLPL 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRozAbaKs9M
- bouke 1y agoThe Dutch translation is NSFW though as it translates “beaver” as suggested.
- slumberlust 1y agoDoes the Dutch word for beaver also act as a euphemism for the body part in Dutch?
- jachee 1y agoMore explicitly so. The Dutch go rodent where Americans go feline.
- bouke 1y ago~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_eufemismen https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seksuele_volkstaal_en_eufemism... it seems that “bever” is apparently also used as euphemism. As is “floppy drive” TIL!
- ErroneousBosh 1y ago> 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.
- masklinn 1y agoThat’s McNally rather than LPL.
- LoganDark 1y agoYou are using a Master Lock model 606. It can be opened with a Master Lock model 606.
- xnzakg 1y agoThis one? https://youtu.be/_goIYP3FfO8 https://youtu.be/_goIYP3FfO8
- QuercusMax 1y agoMy 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.
- rolph 1y agoyou are adjacent to the concept that locks are an honest persons way of communicating to other honest people that an invitation is required.
- bravoetch 1y agoMy dad's wisdom as he cut my bike lock off when I lost the key in middle school: "locks keep honest people out."
- MarsIronPI 1y agoYour dad sounds like a very wise man.
- JCM9 1y agoGreat channel, and yes the ineffectiveness of nearly all commercially available locks is depressing. At best it would briefly slow down a skilled picker.
- legitster 1y ago> 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.
- jaggederest 1y agoThe 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.
- dfltr 1y agoGood 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-theft-attempt-archspire/ https://loudwire.com/sleeping-drummer-stops-band-trailer-the...
- briHass 1y agoAbout 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.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ohdeardear 1y ago
- userbinator 1y agoThe 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.
- mothballed 1y agoThis 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.