Saintcon: Lock Picking Lawyer Keynote

This will not always be the case. Given his goals, the channel will change as his priorities shift. When he reaches his goal "everyone is aware that locks suck", his next goal is "change locks for the better". This will involve designing and selling locks and pointing viewers towards better locks in a commercial way.

Anyway, if you watch all / most of his videos the near constant refrain running through them isn't "with finely honed skills and the right hard to find speciality tools it's easy to open this lock" (though he does do that). Instead it's: "it's easy to open this lock with no or few skills, no or little practice, with trivially found, improvised, or purchased tools, using exploits that have been known in the lock manufacturing and locksmithing industries for decades or centuries".

That in turn is his point in this keynote. These exploits have been known in the lock manufacturing and locksmithing industries for decades or centuries and yet many, perhaps most of the locks that people can buy in stores, still have those flaws (which are easy and inexpensive to eliminate in the design and construction process).

The only low-skill attack that seems to have any widespread effectiveness (and would therefore be worth trying on every lock) is raking, and that is pretty easily defeated by any lockmaker who cares.

On the other hand, if the locksmith clicked my lock out in just 30 seconds, I would probably ask him/her to sell me a better (and sometimes more expensive) lock based on his/her professional opinion.

A story I was told once by an electrician who worked at a steel works for years.

The story goes something like this:

One day he was called out to a big engineering workshop, all their fancy new equipment is on the blink.

He walks up to one of the machines, has a look, then without saying anything promptly turns around and walks outside, followed by the curious manager.

The electrician circles the building and turns on the first tap he sees, and lets the water flow for a few minutes spilling on the ground. After leaving that go for a while, he turns the tap off again, and walks back in and tells the machine operators to try again. Magically, they all start working again.

The electrician has been there for barely a few minutes and hasn't even touched the machine or anything else electrical.

The manager asks for an explanation, since the electrician didn't even touch anything electrical. By way of response, the electrician says "You had someone fix that tap outside that was leaking, didn't you?" the manager replies in the affirmative. The electrician then explains that the leaking tap was keeping the building grounded - the slow leak was just enough to keep the sandy soils moist enough for a proper earth connection.

The electrician hands over the bill, with the emergency callout fee and minimum hours, etc. The manager protests that surely just turning on a tap didn't warrant a fee that large.

The electrician replies that turning the tap on was free, knowing to turn the tap on was what they were paying for.

Whether that story is true or not, there's plenty of similar ones.

The point is that while you might get annoyed that an expert came in and solved the problem quickly, without that expert you were going to wait a lot longer or spend a lot more trying to fix it some other way.

Personally, I'd rather deal with a locksmith that gave me the option: We can drill the lock, you can pay (say) $300 for new locks and keys and it'll take 30 minutes. Or, you can pay $300, we'll pick it in a minute, you keep your existing keys.

The locksmith I called a few years ago used a long piece of wire with a string attached, slid it under the door to pull down the door handle from the inside.

Spoiler: he leaned on the door to hold the latch in place, then used a plastic shim to trip it open.

If anyone know a better insurance the cover the above cases in the UK. Please tell me.

If a car alarm goes off my reaction is not "oh no, someone is stealing a car" it's "man I hope they know how to shut that off quickly"

Bump keys are the simplest way to bypass common locks. You can make one in a few hours and it’s pretty much universal.

Most doors aren’t that strong. You can’t pick a lock but you can just knock the door in.

If you can’t knock a door in, try a window.

House has a security system? Get a ladder and go to the second floor. Most security systems are only installed on the first floor.

Or cut the phone line outside the house as that’ll disable the security system entirely (unless it’s wireless).

If the security system has a combined control panel and main board, just run in and smash it. Good systems separate the control panel from the main board to delay the burglar finding it and allowing the system to call for authorities.

Basically locks, security systems, cameras, reinforced door frames, and protective film on windows are just delays, not preventatives. The idea is to delay the burglar enough such that they either get caught or so they decide to hit the next house without as many obstacles.

Of course, you can reinforce your door frame and this doesn’t work. But the next locksmith (like I said, regular occurrence) used a bump key to pick it and was in just as fast.

Needless to say, I don’t trust door locks anymore.

You find a strong pint to lean on (a wall, or the ground) and the door is forced open in a matter of seconds (something gives away, hinges or lock).

This is why my lock is a smart one, to make it easier for people to get in (the ones I want to) and I know that a burglar is not going to analyze the emission spectrum but just force my door open.

I would definitely prefer him to use technonoly and not break my door.

The Kwikset smart key v3 can't be picked because you get no feedback until all pins are set. You can decode them one pin at a time with expensive specialized tools such as a micro camera put into the cylinder but they will keep someone out for a while so they do their job. You still need to cut a custom key to get in even when you decode it so it is time consuming.

A Medeco will keep out even an experienced lockpicker for a while since pins must be in the right rotation and the right heights.

Beyond that there are really good Disk Detainer locks like the Protec 2 that have no feedback until all discs are correct. There are 0 public confirmed defeats of them.

Beyond that you get into hybrid digital keys like the Cliq. Then you can combine an cylinder known to not have any defeats with a second set of pins that can only be engaged after an AES challenge/response between a microcontroller in the key and one in the lock.

These also have never been defeated.

There are also solutions like the Bowley lock that don't expose the tumblers to the outside world and can only be defeated with many hours of work making custom tools for that specific lock.

I could go on and on.

The reason you can't buy good locks at US hardware stores is fully because the uneducated masses rejected high security locks once companies like master lock pumped out $5 locks with 10/10 security ratings in spite of any informed child being able to open them.

I would love to see people like LPL put their lawyer hats on and sue these companies for dangerously deceptive advertising.

A repeater attack means tunneling the communications over the internet/long distance radio/whatever, where someone's in your car and someone else is following you. That's the repeater bit, they have a pair of devices that act like a long distance radio repeater.

There's discussion in the comments with Bowley Lock Company Inc saying that the stars did align, but we might never know

But an easy code, power tools and having the lock in an ideal work position doesn't make it easily pickable.

Sounds like the same useless discussions on computer security where people will discuss key sizes but not rubberhose cryptography.

In general, try to get any “rated” European lock. They have standards for pick resistance and brute force resistance unlike retail US locks. Look for something with dimple pins, an active element, or multiple pin stacks with security pins, trap pins (anti tamper).

With all that said I don’t think the low security locks we have are such a problem. You can break a window open or just find an unlocked door if you are looking to do some bad shit. I like how Schuyler Towne put it: locks are just a social contract. I’m saying, hey, don't go opening that door, and as a civil society we agree not to.

A higher security lock on your home isn’t going to make your flimsy door harder to kick down, or your window harder to break, so yeah it’s nice to be educated on the security trade offs you make physically, but I’m not sure it’s important to beef up residential security in the US.