grains

Lockpicking

Ten or so locks in a box and on a table. One of the locks is broken. There's also a bottle of Club Mate, a couple people and a transparent acrylic signpost with "Lock Picking" glowing on it.

Lockpicking is a practice of opening locks without a key. Knowing how locks work and spreading awareness of their weaknesses is crucial for safety at work and home as long as it has nothing to do with illegal activities.

In some places it is prohibited by law to pick locks, as well as to carry, sell or own lockpicks. Regardless of the law, these rules always apply:

When we started to work on the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos, everything was in such a hurry that it wasn't really ready. All the secrets of the project - everything about the atomic bomb — were kept in filing cabinets which, if they had locks at all, were locked with padlocks which had maybe only three pins: they were as easy as pie to open.

To improve security the shop outfitted every filing cabinet with a long rod that went down through the handles of the drawers and that was fastened by a padlock.

Some guy said to me, "Look at this new thing the shop put on—can you open the cabinet now?". I looked at the back of the cabinet and saw that the drawers didn't have a solid bottom. There was a slot with a wire rod in each one that held a slidable piece (which holds the papers up inside the drawer). I poked in from the back, slid the piece back, and began pulling the papers out through the slot. "Look!" I said. "I don't even have to pick the lock."

From "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

Hobby and sports #

Organizations such as TOOOL promote lockpicking as a sports discipline ("locksport" or "sportpicking") and security conferences such as DEFCON or Chaos Communication Congress host various events where you can learn the ropes, these are known as "Lockpick Villages".

Locks #

A schematic of a typical pin tumbler lock: a housing, springs, driver pins, shear line, plug, key pins.

The image was taken from: How to pick a lock with a bobby pin

Pin tumbler is the most widespread type of locks. The springs force the driver pins to stay on the shear line and block the plug from turning.

The driver pins are of the same size, while the key pins are selected in such a way that inserting the matching key sends the driver pins exactly above the shear line, allowing the plug to freely rotate sideways and open the lock.

When the matching key is not available, the challenge is to lift the driver pins one by one and keep them lifted until all pins are done.

Tools #

Most common locks share similar designs and can be picked using a few simple tools, i.e. a "snake" and a tension tool. These can be purchased online. Avoid purchasing kits with too many items, better spend the money on acquiring various locks for practicing.

A variety of lockpicks

Left to right: short hook, snake, half-diamond, and a four torsion wrenches, including a "twist-flex" one

Rake picks, such as the "snake" one, open the lock by rapidly "raking" and activating all the pins simultaneously.

Half-diamond tips are used mostly used to lift pins one by one, but could also be used for raking.

Hook picks, also known as "feelers" or "fingers" are used to lift individual pins and never for raking.

Tension wrenches apply clockwise pressure on the plug so that the pins stay lifted till the plug can freely move.

There are more tools listed on Wikipedia.