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No one would be surprised if you showed that you could cut a hole in pretty much any normal door given the right cutting tool. Yet people seem to act surprised

No one would be surprised if you showed that you could cut a hole in pretty much any normal door given the right cutting tool. Yet people seem to act surprised and betrayed to learn that a normal lock can be picked or broken given the right tool.

henry2023 1y ago
In this case, the right tool is an empty can and scissors
mananaysiempre 1y ago
> No one would be surprised if you showed that you could cut a hole in pretty much any normal door The definition of “normal” varies by region. In European cities, it means a pretty heavy door of multiple layers of steel (and pretty unpleasant stuff in the middle) that would probably take 15 minutes of deafeningly loud cutting with a circular saw. I understand the standard for US suburbs is much lower (as it might as well be, given windows exist and the walls aren’t all that sturdy either).
- jacobr1 1y ago
  Right - the quality of your locks matter a lot less if your average 5-year-old tee-baller can through brick through the wind and climb in. One always needs to consider their threat model when considering what security to invest in getting.
  - healsdata 1y ago
    Bang on. LPL himself uses a slightly modified Kwikset lock. The modification seizes the lock if someone tries to pick it. I'm the video, he says it isn't to stop all break-ins, but to stop non-destructive break-ins.
    - mananaysiempre 1y ago
      So a tamper-evident system not a (particularly) tamper-resistant one.
- ErroneousBosh 1y ago
  A very long time ago I worked in an office building that had several suites of offices. One of them was a biotechnics company that did things like genetic analysis of farmed fish for selective breeding, massively commercially sensitive stuff. They had a "secure document store" built within their suite, with a thick door made of 19mm ply layers either side of a 6mm steel plate, welded to a full-length hinge, which was in turn welded to a 25mm steel tubing frame, with big long brackets bolted into the brick work of the exterior wall on one side and a steel beam on the other. One key in the possession of the CIO, one in the possession of the CEO. CEO was at a fish farm in Norway. CIO was in the office, getting paperwork out of the safe in the secure room, got a phone call, stepped out of the room to get a better signal, slam <CLICK> <KACHUNK> as six spring-loaded bolts about as thick as your thumb pegged the door shut. Rude words. Can't get a locksmith that can pick that particular Ingersoll lock. Can't get a replacement key because the certificate is in the room, and you'd have to drive down to England to get it. Can't jemmy the door open, it's too strong. Wait. There's a guy who parks an old Citroën in the car park, I bet he has tools, doesn't he work for that video company downstairs? Let's ask him. So yeah it took about ten seconds to get in to the secure room. I cut a hatch through the plasterboard with a Stanley knife, recovered the keys, taped the plasterboard back in place, and - the time-consuming bit - positioned their office fridge so no-one could see it. A swift appointment with an interior decorator was made by a certain C-level exec, and a day or two later there was a cooler with about 25kg of assorted kinds of salmon and a bottle of whisky left in my edit suite.
  - taneq 1y ago
    Hah, I love this sort of story. Recently I was on site and we needed some electrical as-built drawings. They’d been stashed in a tool box, which was locked (and pretty well designed to protect the padlock from bolt cutters / angle grinders). Unfortunately one of the guys had taken the key with him and it was now a two hour plane flight away. They already tried and failed to cut the lock, and were getting an angle grinder to just cut in through the lid (it was ~3mm steel sheet, so hardly impenetrable, but destroying the toolbox would not have been ideal) when I pulled the pin out of the hinge and recovered the drawings that way. Turns out watching Pirates of the Caribbean wasn’t a waste of time after all. ;)
  - 1y ago
MattSayar 1y ago
It's like we forget rocks can easily go through windows.
- jopsen 1y ago
  And if you try to put bars in the window; you'll have a really bad day if your house catches fire! Same with a moad full of piranhas, it's not fun to fall in by accident :) Best and cheapest option is a dog, or simply giving up.
  - bigiain 1y ago
    Best and cheapest option is a dog, decent insurance, and off site backups that regularly get restores tested. And maybe a little bit of not getting too attached to "stuff" - there's very little stuff that's truly irreplaceable. I'd miss my first guitar if my house was robbed and they took it or if my place burnt down. I'd miss the HiFi gear I bought in 1988 and still use, and maybe my modded espresso machine. But I'd get over that loss and my sentimental attraction to those things just fine, especially after I'd replaced then with my insurance settlement.
  - cheema33 1y ago
    Dog is not the cheapest option. The amount of work that goes into taking care of a dog is quite substantial. I know from experience. While many/most people do not mind doing the work/expense, some of us prefer cats because they are a lot less work, among other reasons. I do however admit that cats suck at scaring away intruders.
    - hunterpayne 1y ago
      A large dog is one of the few things that can actually prevent most break-ins. Story time: There was a serial killer in CA a few decades ago. The police mentioned he doesn't attack homes with dogs, next victim had a small dog. Next the police mentioned he doesn't attack homes with medium or large dogs, next victim had a 30lb dog. Next the police mentioned he doesn't attack homes with large dogs. His next victim didn't have a dog. If its 80+lbs, very few people will mess with them and they will love you forever.
kstrauser 1y ago
And that's fair and reasonable. Of course you can cut a hole in a door. Everyone capable of forming thoughts on the subject has seen someone use a saw at some point in their life. However, locks greatly exaggerate their abilities, to the point you can forgive someone for believing that they actually mean them. I just now went to masterlock.com, clicked HOME & PERSONAL > View All Products, and picked the very first product[0]. It says: > The 4-pin cylinder prevents picking and the dual locking levers provide resistance against prying and hammering. The very first thing it says is that it prevents picking. To someone who isn't familiar with LPL, and who doesn't want to have someone pick their lock, this seems like a great product. It prevents picking! And it must, because otherwise it would be illegal to say that, right? But alas, it does not, in fact, prevent picking. Compare that to a random product page for a household front door[1] that says "Steel security plate in the frame helps to resist forced entry" and "Reinforced lock area provides strength and security for door hardware", which indicates that this might be a strong door, but doesn't claim that it "prevents someone kicking it in". It helps to resist forced entry, but doesn't say that it prevents it. [0]https://www.masterlock.com/products/product/130D https://www.masterlock.com/products/product/130D [1]https://www.homedepot.com/p/Masonite-36-in-x-80-in-Premium-6-Panel-Left-Hand-Inswing-Primed-Steel-Prehung-Front-Exterior-Door-with-Brickmold-27112/100087243#see-more-details https://www.homedepot.com/p/Masonite-36-in-x-80-in-Premium-6...
- BobbyTables2 1y ago
  Very good points. Nobody can even legally claim Vitamin XYZ prevents cancer/etc even if the lack of it causes such. Big Lock needs to be taken to task…
jeroenhd 1y ago
The difference here is that cutting a hole in a door is a destructive operation, like applying bolt cutters to a padlock. Lockpicking just operates the lock as designed. The analogy is probably closer to someone entering your home by pushing the doorframe open so that the door opens without unlocking the lock, or that many automatic doors can be opened by spraying some compressed air through a thin sliver, triggering the internal door sensors. Both are feasible in practice, leave little evidence behind if done well, and do actually surprise a lot of people.

henry2023 1y ago

In this case, the right tool is an empty can and scissors

mananaysiempre 1y ago

> No one would be surprised if you showed that you could cut a hole in pretty much any normal door The definition of “normal” varies by region. In European cities, it means a pretty heavy door of multiple layers of steel (and pretty unpleasant stuff in the middle) that would probably take 15 minutes of deafeningly loud cutting with a circular saw. I understand the standard for US suburbs is much lower (as it might as well be, given windows exist and the walls aren’t all that sturdy either).

jacobr1 1y ago
Right - the quality of your locks matter a lot less if your average 5-year-old tee-baller can through brick through the wind and climb in. One always needs to consider their threat model when considering what security to invest in getting.
- healsdata 1y ago
  Bang on. LPL himself uses a slightly modified Kwikset lock. The modification seizes the lock if someone tries to pick it. I'm the video, he says it isn't to stop all break-ins, but to stop non-destructive break-ins.
  - mananaysiempre 1y ago
    So a tamper-evident system not a (particularly) tamper-resistant one.
ErroneousBosh 1y ago
A very long time ago I worked in an office building that had several suites of offices. One of them was a biotechnics company that did things like genetic analysis of farmed fish for selective breeding, massively commercially sensitive stuff. They had a "secure document store" built within their suite, with a thick door made of 19mm ply layers either side of a 6mm steel plate, welded to a full-length hinge, which was in turn welded to a 25mm steel tubing frame, with big long brackets bolted into the brick work of the exterior wall on one side and a steel beam on the other. One key in the possession of the CIO, one in the possession of the CEO. CEO was at a fish farm in Norway. CIO was in the office, getting paperwork out of the safe in the secure room, got a phone call, stepped out of the room to get a better signal, slam <CLICK> <KACHUNK> as six spring-loaded bolts about as thick as your thumb pegged the door shut. Rude words. Can't get a locksmith that can pick that particular Ingersoll lock. Can't get a replacement key because the certificate is in the room, and you'd have to drive down to England to get it. Can't jemmy the door open, it's too strong. Wait. There's a guy who parks an old Citroën in the car park, I bet he has tools, doesn't he work for that video company downstairs? Let's ask him. So yeah it took about ten seconds to get in to the secure room. I cut a hatch through the plasterboard with a Stanley knife, recovered the keys, taped the plasterboard back in place, and - the time-consuming bit - positioned their office fridge so no-one could see it. A swift appointment with an interior decorator was made by a certain C-level exec, and a day or two later there was a cooler with about 25kg of assorted kinds of salmon and a bottle of whisky left in my edit suite.
- taneq 1y ago
  Hah, I love this sort of story. Recently I was on site and we needed some electrical as-built drawings. They’d been stashed in a tool box, which was locked (and pretty well designed to protect the padlock from bolt cutters / angle grinders). Unfortunately one of the guys had taken the key with him and it was now a two hour plane flight away. They already tried and failed to cut the lock, and were getting an angle grinder to just cut in through the lid (it was ~3mm steel sheet, so hardly impenetrable, but destroying the toolbox would not have been ideal) when I pulled the pin out of the hinge and recovered the drawings that way. Turns out watching Pirates of the Caribbean wasn’t a waste of time after all. ;)
- 1y ago

MattSayar 1y ago

It's like we forget rocks can easily go through windows.

jopsen 1y ago
And if you try to put bars in the window; you'll have a really bad day if your house catches fire! Same with a moad full of piranhas, it's not fun to fall in by accident :) Best and cheapest option is a dog, or simply giving up.
- bigiain 1y ago
  Best and cheapest option is a dog, decent insurance, and off site backups that regularly get restores tested. And maybe a little bit of not getting too attached to "stuff" - there's very little stuff that's truly irreplaceable. I'd miss my first guitar if my house was robbed and they took it or if my place burnt down. I'd miss the HiFi gear I bought in 1988 and still use, and maybe my modded espresso machine. But I'd get over that loss and my sentimental attraction to those things just fine, especially after I'd replaced then with my insurance settlement.
- cheema33 1y ago
  Dog is not the cheapest option. The amount of work that goes into taking care of a dog is quite substantial. I know from experience. While many/most people do not mind doing the work/expense, some of us prefer cats because they are a lot less work, among other reasons. I do however admit that cats suck at scaring away intruders.
  - hunterpayne 1y ago
    A large dog is one of the few things that can actually prevent most break-ins. Story time: There was a serial killer in CA a few decades ago. The police mentioned he doesn't attack homes with dogs, next victim had a small dog. Next the police mentioned he doesn't attack homes with medium or large dogs, next victim had a 30lb dog. Next the police mentioned he doesn't attack homes with large dogs. His next victim didn't have a dog. If its 80+lbs, very few people will mess with them and they will love you forever.

kstrauser 1y ago

And that's fair and reasonable. Of course you can cut a hole in a door. Everyone capable of forming thoughts on the subject has seen someone use a saw at some point in their life. However, locks greatly exaggerate their abilities, to the point you can forgive someone for believing that they actually mean them. I just now went to masterlock.com, clicked HOME & PERSONAL > View All Products, and picked the very first product[0]. It says: > The 4-pin cylinder prevents picking and the dual locking levers provide resistance against prying and hammering. The very first thing it says is that it prevents picking. To someone who isn't familiar with LPL, and who doesn't want to have someone pick their lock, this seems like a great product. It prevents picking! And it must, because otherwise it would be illegal to say that, right? But alas, it does not, in fact, prevent picking. Compare that to a random product page for a household front door[1] that says "Steel security plate in the frame helps to resist forced entry" and "Reinforced lock area provides strength and security for door hardware", which indicates that this might be a strong door, but doesn't claim that it "prevents someone kicking it in". It helps to resist forced entry, but doesn't say that it prevents it. [0]https://www.masterlock.com/products/product/130D https://www.masterlock.com/products/product/130D [1]https://www.homedepot.com/p/Masonite-36-in-x-80-in-Premium-6-Panel-Left-Hand-Inswing-Primed-Steel-Prehung-Front-Exterior-Door-with-Brickmold-27112/100087243#see-more-details https://www.homedepot.com/p/Masonite-36-in-x-80-in-Premium-6...

BobbyTables2 1y ago
Very good points. Nobody can even legally claim Vitamin XYZ prevents cancer/etc even if the lack of it causes such. Big Lock needs to be taken to task…

jeroenhd 1y ago

The difference here is that cutting a hole in a door is a destructive operation, like applying bolt cutters to a padlock. Lockpicking just operates the lock as designed. The analogy is probably closer to someone entering your home by pushing the doorframe open so that the door opens without unlocking the lock, or that many automatic doors can be opened by spraying some compressed air through a thin sliver, triggering the internal door sensors. Both are feasible in practice, leave little evidence behind if done well, and do actually surprise a lot of people.