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Comment by lrvick | Hacker News Reader

I am a reasonably capable lockpicker and lock collector with hundreds of locks of every mechanism I can get my hands on... and as LPL often demonstrates, the vast majority of them, particularly the move clever seeming designs, are actually easy to pick.

I have one of the Enclave lock prototypes on my desk and can confirm the machining is brilliant and I have no idea how one could approach picking this. No feedback at all for correct vs incorrect.

I plan on taking it to my local SF Toool meetup to see if any of the true experts there can come up with anything.

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So looking at the lock’s YouTube video it may be susceptible to an attack where you set all the pins to their lowest, turn the key and then jolt the lock several times while continuing to turn the key.

Compressing the springs by jolting the lock (hitting it with something?) might be very hard if springs are strong and pins are light.

Especially if the lock is mounted in a door.

you're describing a bump key!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_bumping

No, that won't work, because the pins cannot be bumped once the lock is partly turned.

Why not? Vibrations can travel through solid metal. You might be able to make a custom tool that sends vibrations through the core enough to cause the wafers to move up and down even if the core is turned.

The bump key hits the lower pins, which move the upper pins. This is not possible with the Enclave design.

You really cannot move the pins by vibrating the entire lock. The pins are so light that you would need tens if not hundreds of g of acceleration to overcome the spring force.

This kind of comment is why I read these sort of things: Elegant but unexpectedly simple solutions.

From the video it looked like it would be pretty simple to lift the tiny pin wafers into the pin decoding region if there's nothing stopping you from over-lifting.

>I have no idea how one could approach picking this

Not sure how well the lock is made but it may be possible to detect when pins 1 and 6 are in correct position - because the slider is "stiff against springing apart" at those pins, if you get what I mean. The key might turn a degree or so more if those pins are correct, which may be detectable.. That would be only 36 positions to check.

Likewise, pins 2 and 5 should produce slightly more resistance than pins 3 and 4, but the difference would not be quite as pronounced. But if the difference is detectable, then it could be a possible attack strategy.

Didn't that guy stuffmadehere make something that's very similar in concept, sent it to LPL and he still managed to open it? I think the attack angle wasn't the mechanism though.

would a robotic mechanism work? iterate through all the possible pin heights, turn, reset, try again. like those robotic safe crackers.

LPU unite! This is birdie, I hope your day is excellent!

Bird is da word

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