Burglars won't pick locks, though. Breaking the door, door fixture or the window next to the door is much faster, easier and requires very little skill.
I doubt it. Bump key requires a tool and a skill. The bar is not high but there is one. My understanding is most burglaries are impulse or opportunity. Is something open or unlocked? Can I break it with my boot or a nearby rock?
A bump key requires zero skill and a set of 10 will net you around 90% of current doors. And skill? It’s a 30 second video to watch, if you even need it. You push the key in and turn at the same time. If it works it works, if it doesn’t you move on. Even a trained professional can’t get into every single door, it’s about ease. If it doesn’t work, they move on.
It’s used very frequently…. It’s hard to track though since it leaves no trace if done right. Most people would just think they left their door unlocked.
But of course very few people are going to admit that either.
I seriously don’t know why I’m arguing with you or why you think that your opinion matters.
It’s a known issue, simple as that. They are illegal to own without a locksmith license for these things exact reasons.
I never disagreed with whether bump keys could be used, just whether they are.
There are lots of ways you can get sophisticated to break into pretty much any home, to get around various security doors, locks, alarms, dogs, cameras: a homeowner can never keep out a determined sophisticated burglar. I’m arguing that those are extremely rare and would need sufficient payoff, so it’s also not worth worrying about for most of us.
The bar might be low on using a bump key, and I do see plenty of scare stories in the media about how available they are, but none that I read ventured to say how frequently they’re actually used.
However actual crime stats continue to say you need to worry about the basics, and bump keys are either not mentioned as a frequently used tool or are not frequently used. I’m not claiming my house is secure against them; it’s not. I’m saying that if I get burgled, it’s much more likely there was a door open, or a door kicked in, or a window broken. The cause will be the blinking lights visible through the windows indicating potentially valuable electronics, and it will likely be a smash and grab. No bump key involved, no finesse of any kind
LPL is quite a bit better than your average thief though, and if you attract enough attention to have this kind of expertise thrown at you, you need to worry more than just locks.
Against what sort of attack? Who’s the attacker? What capabilities do they have? What do they want?
There’s a saying, “locks are to keep your friends out.” If someone really means you harm, a lock is not going to keep them out: they can smash a window, break down the door, or hit you with a rubber hose until you give them your keys or passwords. This applies no matter what kind of lock you have.
But a lock represents a social barrier: everyone knows that trying to defeat someone else’s lock is a hostile act. The law recognizes this in many places: breaking-and-entering is a more severe crime than trespassing.
A lock may slow down an attacker. It may redirect an attacker to go after your neighbor’s stuff instead of your stuff — but not if everyone has locks.
A password lock has some advantages over a key lock. You don’t have to issue physical keys to everyone you want to allow in. Many allow you to create and revoke passwords separately — so you can grant a friend access to your house while you’re away, and then revoke it when they no longer need it.
However, a password lock also has some disadvantages. If you give a password to one person, that person can easily give it to everyone. That’s a lot harder with a physical key, because they’d have to go make a lot of copies of that key — which, if nothing else, costs money and time.
A computerized lock can create an audit trail: it can record when it was opened, and even which credentials (passwords, keys, …) were used to unlock it.
Any lock can have vulnerabilities — most common key locks can be picked; computerized locks can be attacked through their computer hardware or software.
In cryptography, rubber-hose cryptanalysis is a euphemism for the extraction of cryptographic secrets (e.g. the password to an encrypted file) from a person by coercion or torture—such as beating that person with a rubber hose, hence the name—in contrast to a mathematical or technical cryptanalytic attack.
It is for a house in a residential area, and I don’t keep a lot of valuables in the house. I wish I knew who the attacker would be, so I can catch them with pre-crime.
If you’re concerned about burglars, one problem is that if they decide to hit your house, they can just break a window.
Where I live, burglars often hit cars rather than houses; and they’re very willing to break windows to get in, especially if they see something valuable in the car. They spend no time trying to defeat the locks — hell, some don’t even check if the car is locked. They’re pros; they’ve practiced smashing a window and looting the car quickly.
A lot of the loss due to burglary is the damage the burglar does on the way in, rather than the value of the things stolen. And upgrading locks does nothing to reduce this.
Maybe instead of upgrading your locks, you might be better off spending the same amount of money upgrading your insurance?
Cars have historically been broken into and stolen a lot. Thus auto makers have put extra effort into good locks. Some hardware store deadbolts are so bad you anyone can pick them with lock picks - no instructions needed. Only the best deadbolts are equal what a car has. Likewise breaking a car window is typically harder than breaking a house window.
Likewise breaking a car window is typically harder than breaking a house window.
All it takes to break a car window is a single tap. There's specific tools available, or someone can just use a shard of ceramic. Shatters completely and instantly.
$10 on Amazon. Or just a piece of broken spark plug. Anyone who seriously wants to break a car window will have something handy.
Or maybe thieves are just walking down the street and see a fancy bag on a seat and a rock and just decide to do the deed on a whim and get foiled by tempered glass. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Locks should be difficult enough to break that if you can develop the skills to break them, you’re smart enough to get a real job and not be a burglar.
I love my August smart lock. It auto-unlocks my door when I get home, so I never need keys or to reach for my phone. It also has a key pad to unlock if I dont have my phone. It has alerts and reports status on an app. I can unlock or lock the door remotely for people to check in on things for me while Im away.
Yes, it has issues and eats batteries, but its so convenient.
Check the YouTube channel 'the lockpicking lawyer". He picks locks, both mechanical and electrical. His typical videos don’t take more than 2-3 minute because that’s all he needs to pick a lock multiple times. Electrical locks usually are opened with a paperclip or something similar. Wat too many locks are designed and built by idiots who have no idea about security
I wish that he would try his hand on a lock from Yale. Considering that they are part of Assa Abloy who are very well respected in the lock business. My suspicion is that a company who are mainly makers of mechanical locks at least won’t fall prey for the many of the beginners mistakes lockpicking lawyer points out.
Many of them feature a normal pin-tumbler lock cylinder as a backup in case the electronics fail, and best case scenario it’s going to be as mediocre as any old Kwikset hanging on the peg on the comedy aisle at Lowe’s. So you’re probably still vulnerable to key theft, key duplication, picking, combing, raking, jiggling, etc.
Then there’s the electronics. A surprising number of them rely on either a solenoid to directly operate the latch/bolt, or a relay that energizes a motor to do the same, both of these are vulnerable to attacks by magnets. A stupid number of them are vulnerable to disassembly attacks. There are trace evidence attacks such as looking at the keypad and noticing where all the fingerprints are, there’s just watching you dial the combination…
And the smart phone app driven ones…sure, let’s send a signal that means “I just got home” across the internet. That sounds safe.
It depends on your threat vector. In the academic sense they’re less secure but if you often loan out keys they’re more secure because you don’t have to give someone the key. If you often forget to lock the door they’re more secure because you can do it remotely.
If the door is made of cardboard as most us’s one are u better get the cheapest one it won’t make a difference… look at an European door if u don’t now what I mean…
In my case, definitely more secure. If I’d given my kids a key, my ex was likely to copy it without my knowledge. With a code, I could tell them to go ahead and give him the code if he pressured them, then just change it.
The largest tech companies can’t secure their shit properly.
No these smart locks are terrible. Their physical locks are usually bargain basement trash, their design is usually full of well known flaws and their code is full of well known exploits.
Definitely less secure, but way more convenient. Security for residential door locks doesn’t really matter that much though; thieves are unlikely to try to pick your lock or use some smart-device exploit to access your home - they’ll just smash a window.
Agreed, most of home security is to try and make your neighbours a more tempting target than you. The ethical choice is to do it by making your home a bit more difficult to break into though I guess you could “debuff” the neighbours as well 😉
Let’s be frank, traditional locks exist to keep honest people honest. It’s trivial to learn how to pick locks, there are YouTube channels dedicated to exactly that, and the tools can be purchased for very little upfront cash.
There is no such thing as a foolproof unpickable locks. Any lock that is designed to be opened will have vulnerabilities associated with it that can be exploited by somebody who knows how.
That said, smart locks are probably not much worse off in that regard. I think you can still use a manual key with some models, so that’s not really adding security, but rather convenience. For the ones that are 100% digital, the issue is just shifted to technical knowledge of the lock software and not the mechanical workings.
I’d say they aren’t any more or less secure, just another option that a determined thief can get past, either through skill or brute force if necessary.
I’d say the main purpose of any kind of lock (meaning the weakest link all around your house - strong front door won’t help if the kitchen door to the patio is always unlocked) is to be less appealing to burglars than the next house. At least that is how it works in Germany: Burglars drive around in vans, typically in daylight, sometimes walk around houses, looking for opportunities. If they see a cracked window, or an easy to access balcony door without too much exposure, they’ll give it a go. If that balcony door (I lived in a flat with that setting) has a big iron grating installed in front of it, they’ll move on and look for another place to rob, not because they couldn’t maybe find out that the iron grating is not attached very well, but because it looks like too much effort to even invest the time to find out.
There is at least the possibility to get a good traditional lock that is trusted by organisations that value security and has the interest in getting security solutions that genuinely defeat intrusion.
Anyways, the general idea should be to have a house lock that is better than your neighbors, and that is sufficient for most purposes.
Depends. Any modern lock can easily be picked with something called a comb, which can bypass all the pins by pushing them far up into the lock so it can turn. However, the position on the security of pin pads is debatable. Regardless of which is better, both can easily be bypassed with a drill, so I guess neither.
The reason why people even pick locks to get in homes is because it’s most of the time silent to pick a lock. Do you think someone would just choose to pick the lock instead of breaking the window if noise wasn’t a concern? Though I guess there are silent glass cutters too.
Only cheap locks with a huge design flaw can be picked using a comb. The lock picking lawyer explains in many videos, how this is a very old exploit and easily can be defended against.
However, locks like that sadly still exist. So it is important to choose a reputable manufacturer - be it for classic locks or digital ones. However I will say, that digital locks usually have a classical backup. So that gives an attacker just one mor option to defeat the lock.
I got a lock pick set and was pretty happy learning how to pick all the locks in my house. So I ran out to a hardware store to buy more padlocks and some other stuff. Come in the house and noticed I left the bag of padlocks I bought in my car. Go out to my car and noticed I forgot my keys. Head back and my door is locked. Locked out of my house and car. Through the window I can see my lock picking set on the kitchen table, mocking me.
I have decided to never share this story with my wife.
Still, I take him at his word that he makes it look much much easier than it is. And have bought a couple of locks based on his contentment with the quality and pick resistance.
I haven’t done a breakdown on smartlocks. I do work with machine locks, you know for safeties. We can make them pretty freaken hard to bypass, but I can.
What I have already works. I added a few security pins and my door will likely be broken before someone picks it. Insurance company will understand if I someone broke something to get in, which is why I’m not entirely made at kwikset.
Why add more points of potential failure? I’m more concerned someone can get in without me knowing they had.
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