Interview with a Lockpick
Robert Morris: Am I right in presuming that lockpicking, like most precise skills, requires a good deal of practice?
Lockpicker: Yup! Personally, when I was first picking, I just picked constantly. It wasn't so much about making it harder, it was just that I bought a couple hundred locks right off the bat and would strap padlocks across my chest on my messenger bag strap and pick while I walked. Pick while I was at the bar. Pick at work. Pick while taking people through the tomb. Picked everywhere. Eventually I got better, but it wasn't a decided jump up, just incremental. You learn a lot just pulling shit apart and putting it back together again.
RM: Sure at first, but now?
LP: I had to retrain myself a while back which I think is the closest I can give you to what you're looking for.
RM: But nothing now that you’ve retrained?
LP: So… When I was retraining I literally locked all of my rakes away in a safe deposit box and had only hooks to work with. I needed to relearn completely what I was doing. So, I would grab a bunch of locks, arrange them in a tackle box, and pick through them. I gave myself 5 minutes per lock and tried to cycle through each lock twice in a night. If I could open the lock both times, I retired it.
RM: I suppose what I was asking was are there levels of ever more sophisticated locks that you work through to refine and strengthen your skills? Or are there avenues through which you could expand them?
LP: Not for what I do, no. I'm a speed picker, not a high security picker. The high sec guys are more in the vein of what you're looking for; difficult bittings, security pins, etc. are what I work with and it's why I did my box system. Because I would weed out all the easy stuff quickly then keep facing myself with the harder locks – the ones I could only get once or couldn't get at all – and keep topping the box off every night so that eventually all I had in the box were hard locks and each night I would be able to retire a few of those until I had made it through everything.
RM: What disinclines you from trying your hand at higher security locks?
LP: Impatience. I love knowing how higher security locks work, I love researching locks of the 19th century, I love illustrating various attacks, but I've never had much interest in opening safes or high security locks.
RM: You say impatience, does that mean their sophistication makes the process too involved?
LP: It's not so much that. I mean, I love how complex they are, it's more just their difficulty, as lame as that sounds. It's a whole different world picking high security stuff. I can think my way through some of it, but even great high security pickers, the first time they approach a locking concept are going to require hours, if not days, to pop their first one. I get really excited by their discoveries, but have never had that sort of patience
RM: You mentioned "attacks" in a term very similar to how some people describe chess maneuvers. When you read about or see some of these higher-level guys' discoveries would you equate it to how chess adepts examine problems in magazines?
LP: I think that's completely fair, especially when the complexity is such that it requires the creation of new tools. So, certain locks, if they aren't based on a simple pin tumbler design, require esoteric tools to attack them. Often, the attacker has to come up with these just by deconstructing what the lock is trying to do, and either interfere in that process or bypass that process the creativity of that, of understanding the "opponent" that completely, certainly lends itself to some rich metaphors.
RM: Do you think you'll attempt to advance to that level sometime in the future or is speed picking your set lot?
LP: I actually do a lot outside of speed picking, but the high sec stuff has just never held my interest for long enough. That said? I do get curious. I have friends who insist to me that once I open my first safe I will not be able to stop safecracking which is exactly how it happened with my first lock. I was completely consumed by it as soon as I opened my first so, I figured if the day comes that I open an ASSA Twin, or some S&G Safe I'll dive deep into that. Right now I'm pursuing the history of locks and lockpicking and lockpicking as sport, forensics too. And trying to collect different non-standard methods of attacks for some talks I'm giving. So, I'm not actively going after the high sec stuff, but I'm sure if I took enough time to open one I'd lose another year opening as many as I could.
RM: The history of this endeavor is intriguing. How do antique locks compare to modern ones? Are the approaches essentially the same or are there differences?
LP: Well, the cool thing is that most of the mechanical tech we use today can be found pre-20th century. So, I've been doing a lot of patent diving to find exactly when things came into being. Before the 1850s the pin tumbler lock basically didn't exist, however it did exist, in a simpler form, as far back as 2000 BCE.
RM: Well, all those traps in Indiana Jones had to come from somewhere.
LP: [laughter] So, it's a big question. Modern locks are the result of mass production! Back in the day locksmiths actually made locks. Now, they just service them. The transition was mass production. Locks weren't a common, everyone-has-them sort of thing until, again, the 1800s with Bramah.
RM: Is there a venue for replica locks from antiquity?
LP: Well… Let's talk security by obscurity. So, the reason locks were safe way back when was that each one really was a puzzle in a much more literal sense than they are now. The locksmith knew how the lock functioned and gave a key to the owner that would bypass all of his clever tricks. Sometimes they would even put false keyways on locks to throw people off, all sorts of things.
RM: Like puzzle boxes.
LP: Exactly. But, along with efficiency and affordability, mass production brought with it a big problem. Now everyone know how everyone else’s lock worked. You could literally take your lock apart and know how your neighbor's lock worked. Once you understood the concept you could learn to attack it. Attack your own lock sucessfully and you can attack your neighbor’s. In fact, much of the interesting innovation of the 1800s came from one manufacturer picking another's lock then realizing they could pick their own, too. So, you have this whole disclosure debate: do we try to keep secrets when everyone can find this out for themselves? Do we fully disclose everything? Responsibly disclose? Etc., etc. A lot of what I deal with, actually, are methods of responsible disclosure. But interestingly, you drop a lock no one has seen in a hundred years on something important, it turns out that security by obscurity actually has it's place. An immediate example is bike locks. You know how, in the last 5 years or so, bike lock keys have changed from normal keys to little metal posts with evenly spaced gashes taken out of 2 sides? They are operating disc detainer locks and they are operating really crappy ones at that. However, because disc detainer locks are all but unseen in America they are great security! People ask me about them and I usually say that they should get another 5 years before they've become too popular to ignore and we start seeing cheap tools to pick and bypass them flood into America. But for now, and for a while, they are going to be awesome locks even though if you brought one to Finland they would be able to pop it immediately. Obscurity, in specific instances, can be genuinely secure and dropping an old lock into a modern context could be secure.
RM: So there’s a real cultural divide going on here.
LP: It's funny. As international as everything has become – as global – locks really do remain very regionalized. Pin tumbler locks that we use are not the king of every country. Lever locks are still in huge use in the UK, disc detainers in Finland & Scandinavian countries in general, magnetic locks and crazy high security wafer locks in Asia, whereas we typically only get low sec wafers here. There's a lot out there and it's not always as accessible as so many other things have become.
Interview was conducted over a series of entries in an IRC.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Stay Away from Harvard: The Design Center
Former Infrastructure
After waiting 20 minutes on the platform and another ten once actually on the SL2 (posted schedule states a bus is available every 15 minutes or less) we were on our way through distinctly Soviet Bloc-styled tunnels that took us under the Fort Point canal to the Boston City Courthouse. In my concierge days, I was often accompanied by an apparently homeless man who smelled distinctively of sweat socks but I was not met with that gentleman today. Almost everyone got off at the Courthouse stop (a walking distance half the time from South Station as we'd waited for the bus) and we continued on our way, with one older gentleman remaining behind despite it being the last stop on the line. I'd been to the Design Center once before to pick up my company's race team information and t-shirts so, after the bus wandered around the Design Center in a wide circle, I prepped my backstory to get past the front desk guy and gain entry, and stepped out.
The Design Center is kind of perched out in the harbor, so it was even windier than it was deeper in the city. I had a thought to wander around about as I saw a footbridge that led to parts of South Boston that are actually occupied, but I figured it was too distracting from my primary objective: on to the Design Center. Which was hilariously completely closed. I had no idea this country so revered that quirky 70's show about an inner-city high school teacher. Must have been the words of wisdom the main character always gave at the end. Undeterred, I decided to check out what else the area had to offer. As it turns out, not much. I learned by reading a map at a much later date that there was a former dry dock in the area, the basin of which must have turned into the berth where cruise ships park when picking up people trying to get away from Boston, true to the spirit of being on the Silver Line. Were there happy cruise goers and well-wishers galore? No, of course there wasn't. The entire place looked completely abandoned.
But it did have a dead bird by a trashcan on the second floor!
I did find a few unlocked doors, though. They mostly led to inner hallways, particularly well-designed bathrooms for what by all outward appearances seemed to be an abandoned warehouse. At the end of one hall was a locked door for what looked like a machinists shop. I imagined that some quirky designers completed interesting feats of metallurgy before foisting them on the moneyed classes but that was probably bullshit. There were a few unlocked doors that led to loading docks protected from the open air by thick translucent vinyl strips. What protected whatever was not bolted down from whoever happened to be by with a van or truck was not exactly clear. But hey, Southie's known for its trustworthiness and lack of crime, so it's probably all good.
These guys seemed pretty on the level.
Not wanting to fill up my phone's camera – but mostly because I saw the SL2 approaching a stop, and at 3PM on a holiday schedule, that may be the last time it would come – I dashed off to the bustop, hailing the driver so that he wouldn't strand me in a glorified business park. I thanked him for stopping, but he barely registered my existence and we sat at the stop for another five minutes despite no one else being in sight. I noticed that the old man who had remained when I initially departed was still on the bus, sitting in a different seat. I obliged by sitting far away from him as I could while retaining a window seat.
It did have the loneliest Au Bon Pain on the planet, though!
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Labyrinths 2: Here and There
“Obedience in the womb, chastity in the tomb but involuntary poverty all my days.”
I read in an essay as published on Granta’s online edition the following sentence, “But perhaps the truth is that a person only has two permanent residences: the childhood home and the grave.” This was contained in some broader statement on Brodsky but that doesn’t concern me at all. A homily like this, couched so in the declarative language of the analytic essay, stands out, arrests, for better or for worse. We have the completely generalized, de-personalizing “residences;” the generalized, hyper-personalizing “home;” and the finality and universality of “the grave.” These are the three categories, packed to the brim with presumptions in each, into we all must fall were we to accept any forward momentum with the piece in general. It’s a nodding sentence, one that makes you either nod in encouragement with its keen profundity or nod to sleep. I sleep.
The most obvious and, considering the itinerant nature of so many people in my generation, surely the most widely held objection is that there is no one home. I don’t pretend my childhood was anything but one filled with decidedly average experiences (the details are dear, but they are dear only to me), and a remarkable fortune in love and support. Surely the recipe for a poor artist, if you believe in such idiocy. But it was one that has no arresting childhood home.
On one hand, I moved at what Freud might have regarded as a fairly unfortunate period in my developmental life, from Vermont to Maine at age nine. No great abyss, to be sure, but to a boy of nine, an expanse incalculable enough. What still amazes me, however, is how keenly I was old enough, self-conscious enough, to have formed permanent impressions whose memories linger on. I presently remember how I then compared one place to the other with mild but growing disfavor. The first relocation my family made I was far too young to possess then or now any hint of remembrance, so for all that matters that wide lawn on a hill in Vermont was the childhood home made incomplete. Vermont always seemed so much more ancient, lived in, filled with so much more, what I couldn’t have known at the time I’d come to know as character. It was utterly imbued, then, with the magic of a childhood at the mid-point of being experienced.
Needless to say my transition to Maine was a rocky one. Everything about that new home felt tacky and new, though for an outside agent to look at that house as it is now would realize that impression's absurdity. But that, I think, is what distinguishes what is a childhood home from the uncoupled seeking for home that runs a vein through so many of our lives. Every time I say “I’m going home” – from work, or from a bar, or somewhere other than where I spend most of my nights – it feels starkly ingenuine.
Sure enough, my parents’ house when it’s filled with the sounds of my closest family, that has the impression of this mythical home that, while not exactly sought, is often, sorely, missed. I don’t think much of the exercise of trying to discern which environmental factors caused this rift, but at the same time, as this catalog of the home is populated, I find – and I would wager that this is true for many others who feel uncomfortable in delineating exactly what was the “childhood home” – by more and more locales.
The grandfather’s house, with a wide expanding first floor that arched to a point, cozy but immaculate kitchen, close-ceilinged ground floor leading to rocky under-porch patio to the field overlooking Cayuga beyond; the deeply-oaked Great Uncle’s house, as sylvan in its lands as it was in its interior, deceptively nearer than Ithaca but whose journey seemed impossibly longer, housing one of the most tolerant Great Danes to have ever lived; the long lost house in Ocean City, New Jersey, where we always arrived during the night, where it was always midsummer hot, where the faint, almost gone odor of long-dried horseshoe crabs and dust and ancient wood permeated utterly; these places all possessed the imprint of a stark but ghostless antiquity. These are the locations where a lonely boy transplanted to Maine, old enough to know that ghosts exist and knew of their dangers and rewards, could populate with the myths of the timeless spring and unending winters of the original, that unhaunted house in Vermont. For they are not ancient but timeless – never have I entered any of those houses since that final departure; they are all that idyll of home, converging into the one.
I wonder, now, if I was in fact fortunate in this regard as well; fortunate beyond measure. With that seismic break I can point to the geography of my childhood, acknowledge the risen ridge, and hold inviolate the valley that remains innocent forever.
I read in an essay as published on Granta’s online edition the following sentence, “But perhaps the truth is that a person only has two permanent residences: the childhood home and the grave.” This was contained in some broader statement on Brodsky but that doesn’t concern me at all. A homily like this, couched so in the declarative language of the analytic essay, stands out, arrests, for better or for worse. We have the completely generalized, de-personalizing “residences;” the generalized, hyper-personalizing “home;” and the finality and universality of “the grave.” These are the three categories, packed to the brim with presumptions in each, into we all must fall were we to accept any forward momentum with the piece in general. It’s a nodding sentence, one that makes you either nod in encouragement with its keen profundity or nod to sleep. I sleep.
The most obvious and, considering the itinerant nature of so many people in my generation, surely the most widely held objection is that there is no one home. I don’t pretend my childhood was anything but one filled with decidedly average experiences (the details are dear, but they are dear only to me), and a remarkable fortune in love and support. Surely the recipe for a poor artist, if you believe in such idiocy. But it was one that has no arresting childhood home.
On one hand, I moved at what Freud might have regarded as a fairly unfortunate period in my developmental life, from Vermont to Maine at age nine. No great abyss, to be sure, but to a boy of nine, an expanse incalculable enough. What still amazes me, however, is how keenly I was old enough, self-conscious enough, to have formed permanent impressions whose memories linger on. I presently remember how I then compared one place to the other with mild but growing disfavor. The first relocation my family made I was far too young to possess then or now any hint of remembrance, so for all that matters that wide lawn on a hill in Vermont was the childhood home made incomplete. Vermont always seemed so much more ancient, lived in, filled with so much more, what I couldn’t have known at the time I’d come to know as character. It was utterly imbued, then, with the magic of a childhood at the mid-point of being experienced.
Needless to say my transition to Maine was a rocky one. Everything about that new home felt tacky and new, though for an outside agent to look at that house as it is now would realize that impression's absurdity. But that, I think, is what distinguishes what is a childhood home from the uncoupled seeking for home that runs a vein through so many of our lives. Every time I say “I’m going home” – from work, or from a bar, or somewhere other than where I spend most of my nights – it feels starkly ingenuine.
Sure enough, my parents’ house when it’s filled with the sounds of my closest family, that has the impression of this mythical home that, while not exactly sought, is often, sorely, missed. I don’t think much of the exercise of trying to discern which environmental factors caused this rift, but at the same time, as this catalog of the home is populated, I find – and I would wager that this is true for many others who feel uncomfortable in delineating exactly what was the “childhood home” – by more and more locales.
The grandfather’s house, with a wide expanding first floor that arched to a point, cozy but immaculate kitchen, close-ceilinged ground floor leading to rocky under-porch patio to the field overlooking Cayuga beyond; the deeply-oaked Great Uncle’s house, as sylvan in its lands as it was in its interior, deceptively nearer than Ithaca but whose journey seemed impossibly longer, housing one of the most tolerant Great Danes to have ever lived; the long lost house in Ocean City, New Jersey, where we always arrived during the night, where it was always midsummer hot, where the faint, almost gone odor of long-dried horseshoe crabs and dust and ancient wood permeated utterly; these places all possessed the imprint of a stark but ghostless antiquity. These are the locations where a lonely boy transplanted to Maine, old enough to know that ghosts exist and knew of their dangers and rewards, could populate with the myths of the timeless spring and unending winters of the original, that unhaunted house in Vermont. For they are not ancient but timeless – never have I entered any of those houses since that final departure; they are all that idyll of home, converging into the one.
I wonder, now, if I was in fact fortunate in this regard as well; fortunate beyond measure. With that seismic break I can point to the geography of my childhood, acknowledge the risen ridge, and hold inviolate the valley that remains innocent forever.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Labyrinths 1: Beer Review -- Natural Daddy
Chilling in my freezer right now sits a can of Natural Daddy, a high gravity offering from the makers of other such American luminaries as Natty Ice and Natty Light. I don't think there's a regular version of Natty -- there is no Natural Lager that I know of or have seen. A shockingly high 69 (hold all applause until the end) rating on Beer Advocate, I procured this beer after my very few single friends backed out of our plans for Valentine's Day, leaving me to repeat a grim annual ritual.
I figure that chilling this concoction to its coldest fluid state is a good move. I hold no expectations for this beer, so if it's in as ideal a state as possible, maybe I can get to a level of intoxication where I won't notice it once it warms up. To further this end, though my roommates are remarking on how cold the apartment is, I am not going to suggest turning the heat on.
So let's throw on some Metallica and tear this place apart.
A note on the presentation of this beer. The can actually says "Natty Daddy" making no pretense on quality. Good, I like a lack of pretension. Oddly, the Annheuser-Busch logo is nowhere to be seen. You can't be telling me that this isn't even good enough for Tony LaRussa? I'll follow by not giving this stuff the dignity of pouring into a glass.
A- peering into the can, lit by my bedroom lamp some eight feet away, it looks like the kind of urine where someone is recovering from a hangover and isn't quite back to hydrated.
S- very sweet, characterless
T- all right, my deep chilling method appears to have paid off! It's definitely on the sweet side. Asphalty in that special way Natty has, but it doesn't seem to have corroded the aluminum in any detectable way. Very bubbly which is good in your mass volume malt beverages and not much of a hint of the 8% ABV. Some dry grass notes makes it downright within shouting distance of refreshing.
M- thin overall, but not water thin which is what I was expecting and the carbonation gives it a pleasant character. Big bubbles, not small ones, from what my tongue can discern.
D- phew, just burped. That was not pleasant. For $1.75, I think you should get at least 8 more ounces of this stuff, but hey, the desperately single on V-Day can't really be that picky.
And now begins the race against time. It is currently 8:17. I reckon I have 8 minutes to drink this before it becomes toxic.
First chug had no major setbacks, though it was a pretty wimpy chug.
8:19 -- ugh, it's already warming up and thinning out. The bubbles did not last long. Only took two big draws because it had so wildly transformed.
8:21 -- o god, this beer is going south in a hurry, chart to follow.
8:22 -- ashen malt flavor becoming apparent, this is truly a race against the clock. The only better music choice than Metallica would have been the soundtrack to 24.
8:23 -- two minutes, my prediction is coming true. I am wondering about the irony of slamming a deeply inexpensive beer while listening to a band talk about how alcohol abuse messed up their lives.
8:24 -- down the hatch, no looking back.
Well I'm still here, feeling the alcohol radiate into my system. It is pretty cold, I'm going to turn the heat on. The taste fell off a cliff then exploded and was eaten by wolves. It was a valuable experience, no doubt, but not one I would overly recommend. If you need to get drunk in a hurry for cheap, just buy a 40, but the Cambridge liquor store I went to was too fancy for any of the finer 40s on the market. SO that wasn't an option.
I have just learned that this is more alcoholic than Mickey's, my preferred get-drunk-quick 40. A list of other popular 40s Natty Daddy has a higher ABV than:
Mickey's
Old English
Hurricane
Thank god, if this was more alcoholic than Camo High-Gravity I would have been very disappointed. It's just barely less alcoholic than Steel Reserve. Truly a drink of kindgs.
A+
I figure that chilling this concoction to its coldest fluid state is a good move. I hold no expectations for this beer, so if it's in as ideal a state as possible, maybe I can get to a level of intoxication where I won't notice it once it warms up. To further this end, though my roommates are remarking on how cold the apartment is, I am not going to suggest turning the heat on.
So let's throw on some Metallica and tear this place apart.
A note on the presentation of this beer. The can actually says "Natty Daddy" making no pretense on quality. Good, I like a lack of pretension. Oddly, the Annheuser-Busch logo is nowhere to be seen. You can't be telling me that this isn't even good enough for Tony LaRussa? I'll follow by not giving this stuff the dignity of pouring into a glass.
A- peering into the can, lit by my bedroom lamp some eight feet away, it looks like the kind of urine where someone is recovering from a hangover and isn't quite back to hydrated.
S- very sweet, characterless
T- all right, my deep chilling method appears to have paid off! It's definitely on the sweet side. Asphalty in that special way Natty has, but it doesn't seem to have corroded the aluminum in any detectable way. Very bubbly which is good in your mass volume malt beverages and not much of a hint of the 8% ABV. Some dry grass notes makes it downright within shouting distance of refreshing.
M- thin overall, but not water thin which is what I was expecting and the carbonation gives it a pleasant character. Big bubbles, not small ones, from what my tongue can discern.
D- phew, just burped. That was not pleasant. For $1.75, I think you should get at least 8 more ounces of this stuff, but hey, the desperately single on V-Day can't really be that picky.
And now begins the race against time. It is currently 8:17. I reckon I have 8 minutes to drink this before it becomes toxic.
First chug had no major setbacks, though it was a pretty wimpy chug.
8:19 -- ugh, it's already warming up and thinning out. The bubbles did not last long. Only took two big draws because it had so wildly transformed.
8:21 -- o god, this beer is going south in a hurry, chart to follow.
8:22 -- ashen malt flavor becoming apparent, this is truly a race against the clock. The only better music choice than Metallica would have been the soundtrack to 24.
8:23 -- two minutes, my prediction is coming true. I am wondering about the irony of slamming a deeply inexpensive beer while listening to a band talk about how alcohol abuse messed up their lives.
8:24 -- down the hatch, no looking back.
Well I'm still here, feeling the alcohol radiate into my system. It is pretty cold, I'm going to turn the heat on. The taste fell off a cliff then exploded and was eaten by wolves. It was a valuable experience, no doubt, but not one I would overly recommend. If you need to get drunk in a hurry for cheap, just buy a 40, but the Cambridge liquor store I went to was too fancy for any of the finer 40s on the market. SO that wasn't an option.
I have just learned that this is more alcoholic than Mickey's, my preferred get-drunk-quick 40. A list of other popular 40s Natty Daddy has a higher ABV than:
Mickey's
Old English
Hurricane
Thank god, if this was more alcoholic than Camo High-Gravity I would have been very disappointed. It's just barely less alcoholic than Steel Reserve. Truly a drink of kindgs.
A+
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