I reread Neuromancer last month and there was a line about how the AI had to recruit a human for its plan b/c the final step had a mechanical lock that needed to be picked by feel. I’m glad to see this is a brute force approach and that us humans still have some use for a while more (not sure if my comment is /s or not).
Lock-Picking Robot
51–60 of 147 posts
Re: Lock-Picking Robot
#52The 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 number of comments Two of them in total, if I counted right.
Still astounding in a place where "hackers" congregate.
Re: Lock-Picking Robot
#53Re: Lock-Picking Robot
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 certa…
And a larger lock pick tool does pretty much zero in the case you listed as that is not opportunistic. Those are pretty much the open up and steal when they see an unlocked car kind of people.
It does nothing for the type of criminals that work in groups and steal tires of 50 cars at once, or whatever soup de jour of automobile parts they want at that moment.
Re: Lock-Picking Robot
#55Be sure to also check out some of the MP4 files in the images directory:
https://github.com/etinaude/Lock-Picking-Robot/tree/main/ima...
I was surprised that those thin copper wires can actually push the pins up, I thought they would slide off to the side or compress themselves against the more solid/rigid pins.
Re: Lock-Picking Robot
#56Earlier 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…
It's a lot like turn signals - social communication that goes beyond the practical benefit. If you're using your turn signals, you're saying "I'm aware of the environment and a good participant in the game we're playing because I'm following the rules". If you don't use signals, you're telling people that you're not following the rules, and that makes you suspect in all the other social games. Kinda funny to do some people watching with that perspective, and to start to see how many assumptions are based on society being high trust - the exploitable vulnerabilities are endless, and people communicate a lot about themselves in the rules they choose to follow or break.
Re: Lock-Picking Robot
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the number of comments Two of them in total, if I counted right.
Still astounding in a place where "hackers" congregate.
This place lost its hacker lustre at least 10 years ago.
I registered my first account in 2011 or so and even then it had plenty of "pro-big corporate" energy here.
Re: Lock-Picking Robot
#58It’s the same principle of a safe-cracking robot, but for regular keys. Smart!
But… does it do commentary like “one is binding”, and does it try twice to see if it was a fluke? :)
Re: Lock-Picking Robot
#59Cause the world needs more tech to erode common people’s privacy.
Re: Lock-Picking Robot
#60> brute force all possible combinations Somewhat less impressive than I was expecting. The wire idea is neat though.
Human lockpickers use feedback when picking. I'm wondering if a bot could do the same - e.g. measuring the travel distance to find a binding pin, or the resistance to moving the wire?
> Human lockpickers use feedback when picking.
Or discover when locks are built really badly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeDcOhWvq7I