A Padlock I’d Use [video] | Hacker News Reader

A Padlock I’d Use [video]

youtube.com

152 pointsCraigJPerry63 comments

First time ever my lock picking skills were in good use. A janitor tried in vain to use power cutters on hardened bicycle lock on a shopping mall door. I entered the scene, zipped out my pocket tool kit and set to work. Luckily the core was quite traditional with only few mushrooms and spools.

I trained on Love Locks on Helsinki bridges, which made some people very angry -- and I dont know why, because I put most of them back.

> I trained on Love Locks on Helsinki bridges, which made some people very angry -- and I dont know why, because I put most of them back.

I love this, excellent comedy. Well done.

Now I want to know your criteria.

That is easy: Two Days. If it takes several sessions to get it open, I am gonna keep it. At least until I have learned all its secrets. I have about six such in the training box right now. And one which I have opened only once ever.

Inscription: "Lois & Edwin, March 2018". Yes some English people of Helsinki.

Sorry Lois and Edwin, you should have choosed the cheapie version with 3 straight pins.

BTW. The lock is ABUS 72/40. Some springs are very weak, so it may be that some pins are stuck.

72/40 can be extremely evasive with the right bitting, I love those little things.

Oh Helsinki has love locks on bridges too? Interesting social phenomenon that's technically vandalism.

The policeman said so too.

-- Yes those angry people called the polize.

Oh, yeah. I live in Paris, and really, screw these locks.

Feel free to steal as many as you want. (Municipal employees have to take them off and throw them out every so often anyway)

The Hohenzollernbrücke in Cologne is so full of love locks that graffiti painters are using them as a canvas, which I find a great creative use for them. I couldn't find a picture of the graffiti itself, it might be only visible from the trains running on the other side. Here's a photo of the locks: https://www.ksta.de/image/39079132/max/600/450/8a9b8aaf6594d...

For everybody who was angry, there were probably two quiet fans who were hoping you would chuck the locks in the river. A personal favourite is when the city employee comes with an angle grinder to cut them off en masse.

ABUS locks should be avoided. The family that owns the company is part of the Christian Plymouth Brethren movement. Female family members are prevented from having the same participation rights, going so far as to “incentivize” them to sign contracts in which they waive their inheritance rights.

Interesting. I'd never heard of this sect. Also not allowed to live on the same land as their cattle. Always fascinating to read the rules and behaviors of these outlier communities.

What alternative should be purchased instead? Lead with that information, otherwise you're not helping the person who is looking to buy a lock.

I'm increasingly growing incredibly numb to calls for "don't associate with X because of Y". If you want my attention come to me with "Rather than associate with X check out Z, they offer the same service/product but aren't associated with Y".

I do not have the time, energy, or interest in morally auditing every company that I do business with (like buying a freaking padlock from).

ABLOY locks: https://www.abloy.com/global/en-us

They are pretty much the gold standard for locks. They are not unpickable, but take a considerable amount of skill and specialized tooling to crack.

LockPickingLawyer picking an ABLOY lock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxfUmcMzx08

I agree with your point, however I am not an expert in locks and therefore didn't want to make a recommendation.

So… how are their locks? Easy to pick? Fragile? High quality?

Seems appropriate to me as “Abus” is French for “abuse”.

Do you have a source for that?

Unfortunately it's paywalled and in German, but according to an interview and investigation done by Süddeutsche Zeitung, they are indeed part of the Plymouth Brethen: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/abus-unternehmer-reli...

I've watched a ton of LPL videos, but I think they have had the opposite of the intended effect on me.

I've now been convinced that if someone wants to pick a lock, they pretty much can. So I just buy the cheapest lock with the strongest shackle.

The takeaway I've consistently gotten is "Don't buy MasterLock"

A lot of the other examples of locks do show that a skilled picker can get through in almost no time. There are a few designs that are better than others, but not by a whole lot.

There are many locks that a toddler with a simple tool can open in two seconds and others which would take an expert a half hour with power tools. There is a lot of reasonable space in between for choosing a lock which isn’t trivial to defeat.

I'm not sure the quality of lock core really matters all that much. Every single thing I have seen stolen that was locked was the result of physical damage like cutting or smashing through. Most bicycle locks sold can be cut with a small pair of diag cutters. They stop people just walking off with your bike but if they are at all prepared its trivial to cut.

I do similarly, although for a different reason - for bicycle locks, my impression is that thieves almost never try to pick them - it's just much easier to break them with wire/bolt cutters, portable angle grinders or jacks.

I figure with bike locks, the best you get is relative security--somebody else's bike is going to be an easier target.

This is generally what physical security comes down to--making it impossible is simply not feasible. All you can reasonably do is make your stuff harder to get than somebody else's.

Location is more important than lock choice IMO. I have my bike stored inside my apartment. Its virtually impossible to steal. If you always keep your bike inside, its pretty safe. But even a good lock is pretty pointless if you leave it accessible to the street overnight.

It's pretty telling that he regularly eviscerates bike locks, but then he once showed his own bike lock was rather cheap. And his reasoning was that he doesn't take his nice bike out, and he would rather they destroy a cheap lock than an expensive one.

The video I saw from him recommended the Kryptonite Evolution 4 chain lock (was there a different one?). It's still quite a beast of a lock with a 10mm chain and weighs over 6lbs (standard size, the mini is lighter). Maybe not the strongest bicycle lock in existence, but still leaps and bounds ahead of many of the lower-end ones...

Yup.

For me, my bike is mainly used for exercise, not transportation. I'll lock it to the bike rack at the local food cart pod when I'm getting a bite to eat, and that's about it.

And yet I still spend nearly $100 on a Kryptonite Evolution lock with an absolutely monstrous chain. The lock + chain weighs I think 15 lbs, IIRC. It's absolutely overkill. But it means an angle grinder and several very noisy minutes would be required to steal my bike while my back was turned, rather than a quick snip with bolt cutters.

On the other hand, the bike parked next to mine, with the cheap Masterlock that can be raked open, connected to a $5 cable that can be snipped with Harbor Freight Chineseum wire cutters...that bike could probably be stolen without anybody around even noticing.

It should be noted that LPL is an exceptionally skilled picker using custom tools and makes quite difficult feats look easy. Most pickers with that level of sophistication can find gainful employment.

I don't think he showcases locks he cannot pick in a few minutes on his channel either. From talking to locksmith friends there are a number of locks targeted for commercial use cases where picking/safecracking is considered infeasible (8 hours or longer)

I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I really do wish he cared more about explaining the cost/benefit. Flexing how a lock can easily be defeated by a custom-made tool after hours of analysing it is not actually a good proxy for the security situations I use a padlock for.

He used to, when it was more of a hobby. Now almost all the videos have the line “these tools are part of the genesis set I sell over at…” somewhere in there.

Don't think the content changed in general, just which brand of tools he uses did IMO.

He ~rarely but consistently mentions some locks that are things he'd use or are worth the money for some use-case. It's just most locks get dunked on because most are terrible.

I wish he gutted them still. Now it’s usually just a pick and it’s over.

He frequently mentions when skill and specialist tools would be a material factor for the particular lock.

I was on a construction site and the construction trailer was brought in. Its door was padlocked. No Key. With a rotary saw (gas powered) and a metal cutting disk it took about 4 minutes to open. 3 minutes and 50 seconds was trying to get the saw started.

Locks are generally a mild deterrent and "proof it was broken into". reducing access to the shackle seems to be more popular.

Those big metal construction boxes put the lock inside the box with only access to the bottom of the lock. Doesn't help against pickers, but you'll have to cut through the steel box to get inside.

https://images.homedepot-static.com/catalog/pdfImages/f1/f19...

There are different materials for locks, some of which are considerably more resistant to cutting tools.

Security devices like that are not about absolute prevention but about the time, effort, and expertise required to open them.

Abrasives always win[1]. Always. The best you can hope for is to make the abrasive less efficient.

[1] https://www.tripsavvy.com/thmb/TUF10GAAaTV8l7NkWB5bXkZTQe8=/...

Abrasives always win if you have a lock in your garage and a week to open it.

If you're a thief with a battery powered angle grinder and a cheap one at that, it is quite possible that a high quality lock will defeat you. There are alloys that will just eat cutoff wheels and jam up low powered battery powertools. It's always the case that there exists a way to defeat a lock, it is not always the case that a particular person in a particular situation can defeat a lock.

That and noise too.

Pick = silent, Saw/hammer not...

> Locks are generally a mild deterrent and "proof it was broken into".

Exactly this. This is why the American style locks that are vulnerable to bump keying are so very very bad. Anyone with a $1 tool and a mallet with zero skills can break in without a leaving a trace.

"Oh that's a fancy lock you have over there. I could take 4 minutes to cut it, 2 minutes to pick it, or about 15 seconds to force it open with a pair of wrenches. An actual criminal is just going to break that window over there."

I personally feel that his channel over represents the risk to picking. Not intentionally, just simply as a byproduct of watching locks getting picked quickly by an expert in laboratory conditions.

A most recent example was a contractor working on my house had his van compromised and his tools stolen. No lock picking here, the thief punched a hole in the door, just below the lock with, probably, a large screwdriver, and he was in within seconds.

However, as a counterpoint, it should be noted that while everywhere else I saw a soda machine they had those typical, ubiquitous cylinder key locks, the machines in the engineering building in college were all Abloy. So, you know, there's that anecdata.

Not that it helped much, turned out if you put money in the machine, held down the soda selection, and power cycled the machine, it would happily dispense a fresh soda. Rinse repeat, Pepsis for everyone!

LPL does more than just picking including destructive attacks to the lock shackle, body, etc. He’s also reviewed bags and such where he simply cuts through to show ineffectiveness.

That reminds me of the time, way back when I was a teenager and hung out with the wrong crowd, I learned (and saw demonstrated!) that soda vending machines of the time were trivial to steal from. It probably did a fair amount of damage. Take a soda bottle filled with salt water, blast it into the coin slot, start pushing the buttons and watch all the cans get dispensed. Not necessary to muck about with the lock.

Do thieves even resort to lockpicking for padlocks? Bike thieves (at least) just seem to cut or saw the bolt or chain, or if it's a u-bar lock they often just wedge it open (assuming it's a bic pen-resistant lock.)

They use portable Angle grinders

Is there any bike lock that will stand up to a battery-powered angle grinder?

If there is, the thing your bike is locked to wont.

No,abrasives always win. It may remove a bit of the cutting disc, but the embedded silicon carbide ceramic is harder than anything else (except diamond and some exotic carbides, and it will still eventually win against those). It will trade a little unimportant mass off the perimeter of the cutting wheel for a very important bit of mass off the lock, and eventually the lock will lose.

Time is the only thing you can hope to achieve, you can buy a bit of that by wrapping the steel in a jacket of tough, gummy aluminum or PVC thicker than the radius of the cutting disc forcing the thief to clog the disc while they cut out a chunk large enough to get the tool sufficiently deep into the lock to cut the important bits:

https://altorlocks.com/products/saf-lock

...but it's merely a delaying tactic, not a cure.

That bike lock... looks like a caricature of a bike lock. Is it actually serious? (Also, in one of the photos (the Trek ebike) it appears to not actually be locking the bike; I think it would struggle to fit?)

With a rake, a turning tool, and 60 seconds of training, a considerable proportion of padlocks can be opened instantly.

Even so, is this something that bicycle thieves find worth doing?

Really terrible bike locks are rather rare and most require some picking skill at least.

No, I wouldn't expect so.

I've used Squire closed shackle locks in the past with my Almax chain for locking up motorbikes. The nice thing a 19mm chain with the Squire lock is that the shackle is locked into position on the inside of the chain link and the profile of the link prevents the lock from being rotated to attack the shackle easily.

These days I use an Abloy PL 342. It doesn't fit the chain as well, but I can see from marks on the shackle that it has resisted bolt cutters.

Quick web search on the model number shows this is a $125 padlock. Out of my league, but thanks.

I was out walking and saw some guy stealing a bike by breaking the U-lock with a car jack. Unfortunately I couldn't do anything about it (discreetly take pictures and call it in) because the person I was with was so oblivious. But I didn't know before how that type of theft worked.

I had a seriously heavy Abus lock on my storage unit. Extremely difficult to pick and hardened but the thief apparently used a diamond circular grinder to just cut the shackle. I still use those locks, and they are solid. But as with anything, it seems if a nefarious actor wants to get in, they will. Just a matter of their resources and time and skill.

This is what all security measures are: raising the bar of time and talent. Nothing beyond this.

Psychology is inherently a part of this. As other commenters upthread mention they calculate things in terms of relative security and "it will take X time to break my lock, but 1/5 or less X time to break the lock next to mine." But that neglects the perceived value of the secured asset. If your bike is worth quite a bit more than the poorly locked bike next to it, it can be worth the extra effort and risk of stealing it. Similarly for storage units, if a thief has unimpeded access to the place and only has time to try one or a handful of units, the unit with the beefy lock probably indicates more valuable stuff inside than the unit with a normal looking lock.

I’ve never seen LPL endorse a lock before. I’ve seen him trash in plenty of locks by Abus.

Long videos are pretty rare on the LPL channel. Never seems to take him anything like this long to pick a lock. I don’t even need a padlock but an endorsement like this has me thinking i should pick one of these up!

"I’ve never seen LPL endorse a lock before".

Correction: First time ever LPL endorsed a lock which seemed to be relatively easy to pick, Especially with the tool LPL and Bosnian Bill made..

There are plenty of locks that LPL cannot pick, like Bowly locks and new Abloys, and that is an endorsement on itself.

He all but endorsed the Altor SAF lock, noting that it took him machining a custom tool from scratch in order to open it.

He also said he personally uses the Kryptonite evolution chain lock for his bike.

LPL gives positive reviews of many locks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com