The downside of YouTube and Google
There are over 280 videos on YouTube that show how to pick locks. Any locks. A Google search for “bump key” will yield over 1,750,000 results.
The worst part of the bump key phenomena is that insurance companies will not pay a claim because this technique leaves no trace of forced entry.
Let me recommend some items and ideas for your home safety:
1.) A real door lock from Mastercraft.
2.) Anti-intruder device from Glock.
3.) A good professionally monitored alarm system.
4.) Sleep with a cell phone next to your bed.
5.) A dog, any dog that will bark.
6.) A keyless deadbolt.
7.) Neighborhood watch program.
8.) Insured by Smith and Wesson door sticker.
Any other good ideas on how to protect your home?
Les Jones has more on this and a video demonstration you should look at.
December 4th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Years ago a friend of mine bought a professional lock pick set. We went around his company picking locks at random. It was amazing how fast and easy it was to open most locks. I do not remember what kind of locks we failed to open, we were just having fun with no malicious intent, if it couldn’t get it open in a short while we moved on.
The locks we did pick included front and rear entries, office door locks for the prez, accounting and computer room, misc padlocks and steel lockers.
December 4th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
It won’t stop anyone who really wants in, but one of those door chains will leave evidence of forced entry for the insurance company. Either they have to cut the chain or kick the door hard enough to break it, but either way you’ve got something broken.
We put one on our front door when Junior figured out how to open the deadbolt.
December 4th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
I’ll have to differ with the “Insured by Smith and Wesson” one.
To me, those signs actually read “Come steal my Smith and Wesson when I’m not home”
December 4th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
I’ll have to differ with the “Insured by Smith and Wesson” one.
That was a red herring.
I put that in to stir things up. I don’t have one and don’t really recommend them. I should have put an emoticon on that one. Guns are one of the main things burglars want.
How do you insert a winking eye emoticon?
I do have a metal sign from the alarm company. Stickers also.
December 4th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
I actually have a post on the back burner for this. I’d recommend a bump resistant deadbolt for every outside door lock. From my notes, in the USA, bump resistant locks easiest to get seem to be higher-end Medeco locks and the Schlage Primus system.
Lest you think that the inner web tubes have revolutionized the way we buy everything, well it isn’t so on higher end locks.
I want to buy a Schlage Primus deadbolt for my front door. In this case besides the bump resistant lock, I’ll get keys that I would not be able to have duplicated at every friggin mal-wart, home disaster, or j-mart. That means I could loan out a key to say a house maid and be sure beyond a reasonable doubt that s/he did not make a copy. Blanks are unique to each local locksmith, so I’d have to go back, and presumably show ID to get any more keys. The other bonus over the Medeco would be that I could then use my secret mutant powers to rekey the lower “key in the knob” lock to also accept the new key, thus one key opens both locks.
The problem is that I can’t find any real retail locksmiths any more. You would think there would be a list on the Schlage web site, but they fail miserably here. The other possibility would be to find a locksmith that sells on the internet (which would actually work best here). I should be able to hit a locksmith website somewhere and order up a Schlage Primus deadbolt that would match my door and have it shipped to my doorstep with five cut keys. Any future keys would need to be ordered from the same locksmith, but I would be OK with that.
After Googling around awhile and getting nowhere, I set the project aside. I suppose I ought to pick it up and email or call Schlage for a local outlet, take time out of the workday, and get a quote from some guy who only works business hours.
I’m pretty much sold on Schlage Primus system as the best compromise between security in a house who’s walls are really only siding, plywood, insulation and 2x4s, but if anyone has any other ideas, or any leads please post them.
December 4th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Some stuff that may not be for things that go bump in the night but make your house safer:
Fire alarms
smoke detectors
carbon monoxide detectors
adequate flood lights outside
a kick ass flashlight (surefire or streamlight)
Most importantly, talk with the folks you live with. Have a conversation about:
if [someone breaks, house catches fire, tornado] happens, then we do X.
December 4th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Actually, this is such “old school” hacking that the people complaining about it need to stay on their PA farms with their buggies and black clothes.
The Chaos Computer Club in Europe has been holding lock picking classes and competitions during ther hacker cons for ages.
HOPE (sponsored by 2600 magazine) has a forum every year with CCC members doing deamonstrations.
At HOPE 4, when I was on security awaiting uber-flake Jello Biafra, we needed to get a door locked (hotel security was not a concerned for their stuff as we were) and snaged one of the CCC guys to pick the deadbolt shut. He did it in under 30 seconds and said that was the first request he had ever had for that.
Emmanuel and I thought it was a unique request too and we could not think of anybody requesting that before either.
Slashdot has/had frequent stories on lock vulnerability and how-to’s also.
This is really a non issue. All of this info has been easy to find for a long time. Now, it appears, it is easy enough to find for reporters.
December 4th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
This and the keyless deadbolt won’t work when you’re not home. Most of the B&E around here seems to target houses where no one appears home, usually mid-morning break-ins by school skipping students.
Local police haven’t said said how the break-ins are occurring but I came home to a lock that was damaged, obviously by a screwdriver being hammered into the keyway.
(And it’s worth noting that the fucking police declined to take a report (they said they would do one for vandalism) probably as an attempt to “cook-the-books” on crime stats)
December 4th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
It may be old school, but I believe this is a result from the You-Tube / accessible video paradigm shift that #9 was talking about. Compare “ninja rocks” (broken pieces of spark plugs). That trick eventually spread, but the vector for infection speeds up if the effort to share short video clips becomes near frictionless. Another example might be the Bic pen in the Kryptonite lock trick. Once videos of those locks being opened spread like wildfire there was a sudden recall. Kryptonite no longer uses round locks.
If you start to look at what makes up a high security lock, and then go see what they have in stock at Blows, or Home Despot, you’ll notice that all they stock nowadays is junk.
To make a highly effective bumpkey all you really need is a few files, perhaps a bench vice, and some old keys. Go to the hardware store and get keyblanks out of the largest five bins, go through the auto till self checkout thingy, go home and file away, and you can now bump open about 70-80% of home locks and just about any Master padlock you come across.
You probably get something by not getting one of the three brands of door locks that they sell at the hardware store, but I’d just feel better spending ~$200 for a bump resistant deadbolt (estimate, as I’m still looking for a vendor)
December 4th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Well, we have a kick ass neighborhood watch where we live – we call the police every time there is a door to door solicitor who wont leave the the police are invariably there within seconds (helps to have the substation across the street from out development).
Perhaps best of all though is we have lots of spook types living here, security attaches and state department and cia types. In fact, one of my neighbors was home when someone tried to jimmy his door open. Heard it and greated the gun with a gun to his forhead.
any problems we had disappeared after that (except for the occaisional car stereo break in, etc).
December 4th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
btw, it was a Springfield 1911, not a Smith and Wesson
December 4th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Countertop, you live in NOVA, I live in Ward 9.
Plus Wards 5 and 7 are getting pretty gentrified.
December 4th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Suuuuuuure it was. 😉
Oh, that’s semicolon dash close parenthesis. No spaces.
December 4th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Countertop,
Are you in Reston? It was saturated with those types when I was out there.
December 4th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
I think the real problem, Guy, is that the average meth-head or loser burglar is unlikely to have what little gumption and discipline is necessary to learn to pick locks, easy as it evidently is.
But if people start selling pre-ground bump keys on the black market, well… that’s easy enough for even a strung-out wastoid to manage.
The info being out for the types who go to Security Conventions and read Slashdot is one thing; being available to the sort of people who are likely to want to break into your house is another. Combine that with the ease of application of said information by someone with no need for dexterity or thought, and it’s close to an actual problem.
December 4th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Sigivald,
Stop trying to cnfuse me with big obscure words!
December 4th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
It may be old school, but I believe this is a result from the You-Tube / accessible video paradigm shift that #9 was talking about. Compare “ninja rocks” (broken pieces of spark plugs). That trick eventually spread, but the vector for infection speeds up if the effort to share short video clips becomes near frictionless.
This is getting to the heart of the YouTube posts I have made.
I like the concept of “infection” time. That was the point I was trying to make.
There are many good things that may come from YouTube but this is one of the negative aspects. What would be great is to see commercial companies that make “bump proof” locks to market them on YouTube as a way to negate the problem.
But doesn’t that create a new problem? The commercialisation of YouTube. The digital democracy will have many high and low points.
December 4th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
The cajones to perform your own stillwatch, like Tn State Senator Tim Burchett.
A couple of pairs of cuffs.
December 4th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
Guy,
Nope. McLean. I call it the Slums of McLean.
Just down the street from the CIA.
It makes me feel safe at night thought the weird secure telephone boxes you find when you move into houses around here get your mind thinking
December 4th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
They were notably good posts, I just could not think of anything to add.
If you’ve been around on the tubes of internet long enough, you’ll proabally remember when everyone figured out that anything you send out in an email could be effortlessly forwarded to everyone else. If you were lucky, it was when some other idiot hit reply all instead of reply.
Same thing happend for photos when digital camera became common. Now it’s videos/video blogs.
Here’s one of the Bic pen vs. the bike lock videos that caused the recall
http://www.engadget.com/2004/09/14/kryptonite-evolution-2000-u-lock-hacked-by-a-bic-pen/
December 4th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
But if people start selling pre-ground bump keys on the black market, well… that’s easy enough for even a strung-out wastoid to manage.
Too late.
http://www.cheapbumpkeys.com/
After some research I have found out you can for a nominal cost have your locks re-keyed. I am not a locksmith so I can only provide a layman’s explanation.
Look at your door key. If it looks like a hack saw you may have some protection. The pins are keyed at different heights. So a “bump key” resistant lock would have ones and nines separated by twos and eights. One being the minimum pin depth and nine being the maximum pin depth.
If you have the money, which is over a hundred dollars per lock go with the new locks from Medeco or the Schlage Primus.
The best white paper I have found is here:
http://www.security.org/bumping_040206.pdf
While this has been known since 1950 and has been popular for years, the YouTube “instant knowledge” paradox will accelerate the problem exponentially.
December 4th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Ebay has already banned the selling of bump keys, but you can get almost the same thing if you search for “Depth Keys” or “999 keys”.
http://cgi.ebay.com/14-U-K-U-S-DEPTH-KEYS-999-keys_W0QQitemZ120060697531QQihZ002QQcategoryZ63891QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Once you have a set of these keys, transforming them into a bump keys takes almost no skill at all. Just a little file work. The toughest part of making a bump key from scratch is making those deep notches in the right place. For that, you need only minor filing skills.
Having a high-low-high-low lock makes it hard to pick conventonaly, but a bump key will still work, as long as the notches are deep enough. Having serrated or mushroom pins in your lock helps, but it’s not foolproof.
December 4th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
Here’s a page showing why Medeco locks are bump-resistant (most likely bump-proof). In essence, not only do the pins in the lock need to be at the right level, but they also need to be twisted by the key in the proper direction
http://www.northeastsecuritysolutions.com/residential_locks.htm
This type of lock will likely cost at least twenty times what the best lock you could buy Wal-Mart would cost. And that’s installing it yourself. The average consumer won’t see the difference, and doesn’t want the hassle of going through the motions to even get keys duplcated on this type of lock.
December 4th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Here’s a page showing the “Schlage Primus” with it’s “Side-bit milling”.
http://www.bondedlockservice.com/bservicesb/
Every locksmith gets a different setup for the side-bit milling, so you need to go back to the same locksmith to get duplicate keys. It’s sort of like every locksmith having a different unique blank that’s available nowhere else. Although the notches on the top work like regular key pins, the feelers (not shown) for the side milling don’t use pins and are not vulnerable to being bumped.
Although simpler than the Medeco, it’s still probably bump proof, and has the advantage of fitting inside Schlage’s low grade locks. This means you could have a high security deadbolt in your door, and have a lower quality lock in the doorknob rekeyed to open with your Primus key also.
You could also have a shed or other outbuilding keyed to your Primus key.
You could probably have a key duplicated using a milling machine in a machine shop, but that really raises the bar compared to just going to the hardware store.
December 4th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Won’t junkies looking for stuff to steal just bust a window? Isn’t that a helluva lot easier than trying to “bump key” a door? Especially if you’re strung out?
I just don’t see the monthly meeting of crackheads revolving around a YouTube presentation on how to jimmy open a door…
Besides, junkies breaking into your house perform a valuable service: Live fire targets…
😉
December 5th, 2006 at 12:01 am
[…] Reading this post at Uncle’s made me really want a puppy. Sure they are talking about security and all that crap, but there’s a good suggestion for a home security device: 5) A dog, any dog that will bark. […]
December 5th, 2006 at 1:14 am
I don’t have a Glock …
… but I do have a 1911A1 .45 and a 12 gauge shotgun. And a couple of revolvers. And if those don’t work, I have two ferocious attack kitties.