Lock Breakers and Hackers
I’ve lost my key. Can you pass me that banana?
Lock-picking enthusiasts are cracking the ‘uncrackable’ in increasingly creative ways. And locksmiths aren’t happy about it.
Patrick White reports
Driven mainly by computer geeks who see parallels between hacking networks and picking locks, the hobby has exploded online.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently gave the pastime a further boost, confessing that he has been a picking enthusiast since he was a student.
Canadian blogger Cory Doctorow has also shown an interest, posting a number of picking-related items on his popular site boingboing.net.
Sites such as Lockpicking101.com hold forums where tens of thousands of pickers share techniques and triumphs. Some contest one another in open competitions. Others post tips and tricks on YouTube. Their instructions are so thorough that anyone with half an hour to waste online can learn to crack bike and laptop locks and even break into used Mazdas.
and apparently the gold standards are the Medeco locks that have recently been hacked!
