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Lock-Picking Robot

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Re: Lock-Picking Robot

#41

Post by petsfed »

raincole wrote: post #22
MarkusQ wrote: post #4

Cool idea but I'm not buying the justification. There are many cases where the correct response to "but law enforcement needs a way in" is "we have a system for that, it's called a warrant." Further, while standing somewhere for five minutes may be obvious in some situations, there are many cases in which it wouldn't be obvious at all, or the response time would be great enough that this could still be quite useful t…

> security through counting on slow hardware Security through locks doesn't work in the first place. At least not locks that can be picked by this robot. Pick gun is a thing.

Eh, its more that any one security tactic will almost certainly not cover the entire threat space.

Locks are very good at discouraging honest people and lazy, opportunistic people. They are not very good at discouraging generally skilled and motivated people, or people who are specifically interested in what's behind a specific door.

Locks are no obstacle if the intruder is willing to use social engineering. But if all they're trying to do is get into my garden shed, they're going to have to manipulate me or my spouse. Or somehow get past my dog. Meanwhile, my dog has absolutely no bearing on a bad actor getting access to my bank account. But similarly, bringing the full might of the best electronic security to bear to protect a chainsaw and a rake seems a bit excessive. And sort of beside the point, since I've not built my garden shed to withstand creation of an additional door (by e.g. a sawzall or a fireaxe).

Re: Lock-Picking Robot

#42

Post by Rebelgecko »

keybored wrote: post #28
cush wrote: post #23

The number of comments in here slandering the developer’s morality for picking locks is actually pretty surprising for a site literally called Hacker News. Every day there’s a story on the front page of some grey/white-hat showing off an exploit they found to infiltrate a site we all use. It’s an odd double standard.

The title of this website is literally in another sense than white/grey/black hacker.

Lock picking falls under jargon files definition of "hack" imo

Re: Lock-Picking Robot

#43

Post by observationist »

05 wrote: post #31
observationist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locks are not security, in the sense that you're using. A sledgehammer goes right through 90% of them, or the hasps or latches secured by them. A competent lockpicking enthusiast will take two or three minutes to go through almost any of them. Someone motivated to get in with foreknowledge of the lock type can simply use a $200 camera and photograph your keyring from a couple blocks away, then 3d print all the keys o…

> use a $200 camera and photograph your keyring from a couple blocks away Rayleigh criterion: to resolve an angle of 4E-6 rad (key bitting step is 0.015inch =~0.4mm , two blocks is 2 * 200ft =~100m), you'd need a ~140mm aperture lens. Can you really buy one (with a camera no less) for $200?

Well, TIL I'm shitty at the private eye thing, lol. You'd need to get up close, then, or have really good cameras. You're not going to need .4mm precision so long as you can see the differential pattern, though. Memorizing a 5 digit number, each digit between 1-6, and you can remember any kwikset key at a glance, and so on. At most you'd need to print 10 possible solutions if you can't find an absolute difference between lowest and highest points, but most of the time the pattern will have 4-6 potential keys it could be.

Anyway, locks and keys are inconveniences that keep people from casually abusing civil boundaries, is the point, and not all reasons for overcoming those are nefarious.

Re: Lock-Picking Robot

#44

Post by moffkalast »

IshKebab wrote: post #11

> brute force all possible combinations Somewhat less impressive than I was expecting. The wire idea is neat though.

The next step is to train an ML model on all videos of the lockpicking lawyer and it'll get a click out of one, three is binding every time.

Re: Lock-Picking Robot

#45

Post by wat10000 »

keybored wrote: post #28
cush wrote: post #23

The number of comments in here slandering the developer’s morality for picking locks is actually pretty surprising for a site literally called Hacker News. Every day there’s a story on the front page of some grey/white-hat showing off an exploit they found to infiltrate a site we all use. It’s an odd double standard.

The title of this website is literally in another sense than white/grey/black hacker.

Definition 7 from the Jargon File:

"One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations."

Re: Lock-Picking Robot

#46

Post by observationist »

Edman274 wrote: post #17
observationist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locks are not security, in the sense that you're using. A sledgehammer goes right through 90% of them, or the hasps or latches secured by them. A competent lockpicking enthusiast will take two or three minutes to go through almost any of them. Someone motivated to get in with foreknowledge of the lock type can simply use a $200 camera and photograph your keyring from a couple blocks away, then 3d print all the keys o…

The thing about a sledgehammer is that if you're asleep in your house, you, your dog, your SO, or your neighbors might be startled awake by the sound of metal splitting and cracking open. Your security system might be designed to alert on something like a window being smashed. The person attempting to enter the house may be trying to enter undetected, because they know that a broken lock and/or a replaced lock will a…

Locks and keys are usually more an inconvenience to prevent casual abuse of your boundaries. People who want access, nefarious or otherwise, will gain access, whether it's cops, ninja assassins, or junkies looking to strip your house of copper.

Ninja assassins are low on the list of possible threats, but never zero.

The biggest risk to me personally is the junkies and porch pirates, so signs and out of reach and very visible cameras have gone up to make them uncomfortable and feel too paranoid to mess with the locks.

Re: Lock-Picking Robot

#47

Post by wat10000 »

pixl97 wrote: post #38
Edman274 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about a sledgehammer is that if you're asleep in your house, you, your dog, your SO, or your neighbors might be startled awake by the sound of metal splitting and cracking open. Your security system might be designed to alert on something like a window being smashed. The person attempting to enter the house may be trying to enter undetected, because they know that a broken lock and/or a replaced lock will a…

Locks are not security. They keep honest people honest and give a few moments more work to those that are dishonest. It's a promise to society that you'll act decent. Needless to say they mean nothing to those that break promises. In almost all cases, with a lock or not, by the time you figure out the lock is broken (10 minutes or 10 days) your shit is long gone and you better have your security onion setup with mult…

Locks raise the cost of bad behavior, which makes it less likely. They can still be quite meaningful to someone who breaks those promises, if that person doesn't have the tools or time to defeat the lock, or is just plain lazy.

I live in a pretty low-crime area. From time to time, residents complain about things being stolen from their cars. Every single time that I've seen, the cars have been unlocked. A thief certainly could smash a window to steal from a locked car, but the thieves around here seem to be opportunistic and won't go that far.

Re: Lock-Picking Robot

#48

Post by ghurtado »

keybored wrote: post #28
cush wrote: post #23

The number of comments in here slandering the developer’s morality for picking locks is actually pretty surprising for a site literally called Hacker News. Every day there’s a story on the front page of some grey/white-hat showing off an exploit they found to infiltrate a site we all use. It’s an odd double standard.

The title of this website is literally in another sense than white/grey/black hacker.

Originally the word "hacker" made no distinction between the two meanings. This site is pretty old, so you're right, it was intended in the original "Kevin Mitnik" sense (the original hacker, who ironically would fall outside of the modern definition)

The modern acception focused on online computer security came much later. That meaning is neither the one used in the name of this site nor the one that would be relevant to this conversation.

To summarize: today's hackers are also yesterday's hackers, but yesterday's hackers may or may not be modern hackers.

Re: Lock-Picking Robot

#49

Post by 05 »

observationist wrote: post #43
05 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> use a $200 camera and photograph your keyring from a couple blocks away Rayleigh criterion: to resolve an angle of 4E-6 rad (key bitting step is 0.015inch =~0.4mm , two blocks is 2 * 200ft =~100m), you'd need a ~140mm aperture lens. Can you really buy one (with a camera no less) for $200?

Well, TIL I'm shitty at the private eye thing, lol. You'd need to get up close, then, or have really good cameras. You're not going to need .4mm precision so long as you can see the differential pattern, though. Memorizing a 5 digit number, each digit between 1-6, and you can remember any kwikset key at a glance, and so on. At most you'd need to print 10 possible solutions if you can't find an absolute difference bet…

Yeah, seeing how better and cheaper cameras are sold every day I thought that it might be plausible.. and then it apparently isn't.. yet. Maybe with a cheap telescope :)

A covert camera placed near the keyhole is probably a better solution anyway, because most people don't flash their keys when just walking on the street (maybe when unlocking a car, but with keyless that's becoming rare).

Re: Lock-Picking Robot

#50

Post by mmcwilliams »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #10

There is also a Safe Cracking Robot [0] Blog about it: https://joeleb.com/safe-cracking-robot-defcon/ [1] Defcon video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9vIcfLrmiA

This is a class of device usually called an "auto dialer" and have been around for quite some time. This one appears to be fairly low-featured. Newer devices will automatically send a text when a safe has been opened and the better ones are programmed with knowledge of the internal plate schematics so they can shorten the brute force process.
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