When I was in high school, we opened the cabinet locks in the labs with a paper clip. They were those National 4-pin ones. Kwikset locks are barely any better. Schlage are tighter than Kwikset. I use them.
That Tobias guy wrote the book on picking Medeco locks, so it’s not surprising that he can open a programmable Kwikset in 15 seconds. I wonder if the programmable Schlage are as bad.
A similar term is used in the cycling community. The poor-quality bikes available at department stores (e.g. Wal-Mart) are refered to as BSOs: Bicycle-Shaped Objects. Engineered to last about one hundred miles and assembled by minimum wage stock-boys.
As for the knocking down doors, I’ve always had the idea to place an entry door directly in front of a couple-foot depth of rebar concrete, just to fuck with SWAT. Overkill, I know, but it would be fun.
Make sure your steel gate is well anchored. They will pull the back of their truck right off trying to remove it.
I’ve busted heads off drywall screws with both torsional shear (18-volt DeWalt screwgun) and lateral shear (blunt force both intentional and otherwise). Maybe I need to buy a better brand. But yeah, those square-hole deck screws are the bomb.
Now and then I’ll see a strike plate that’s actually a six-foot by two-inch steel plate with a hole drilled for the bolt and held in place by a dozen or more large and long screws. Looks fairly zombie-resistant, at least.
15 seconds? Isn’t that roughly how long a regular pin tumbler lock can be picked in?
Exactly this. Recently bought a house in Boston myself and had a break-in at an apartment in the past.
Locks aren’t going to stop anyone, they’re not even going to bother picking it for 15 seconds when a 2 second kick will get the same job done. A cheap $20 lock will often accomplish the same goal as one with anti-lockpick features in place selling for $60 (any lock can be picked, btw).
In my opinion, you’re better off saving a little money by getting mid-range deadbolts for your doors and reinforcing your hinges/strikeplates with screws long enough to be anchored into the studs. People likely won’t even notice the sound of a swift kick to a door, but the longer they have to bang at it the more likely someone will take notice.
People need to be realistic when considering home security as a whole — a determined criminal will get into your house (unless maybe you have bars on your windows).The best you can do is make it difficult/loud enough to discourage.
Motion activated flood lights, a simple motion-detection alarm system, maybe a camera or two. Hell, even your small yippy dog can be enough to discourage someone. We’re not talking slow methodical heists most of the time, it’s a quick smash-and-grab. Just do everything you can to remove the “quick” from that equation and they’ll look elsewhere.
The other thing about locks in a apartment building or school is that there is usually a pass key that has an extra notch and that key will open any door. At school, grad students got something like the “317 key” but the custodian had the “320 key” that opened all doors. But a little work with a file converted anyone’s 317 to a 320.
Pretty much. But what’s cool (or frightening, depending on your point of view) about this is that, if I understand it correctly, the lock is permanently compromised, and the owner of the lock will never know it.
Master keys generally make the locks they open exponentially easier to pick.
The evil thing about this haq is that you would never know the lock has been compromised, so they could come in over and over.
But the level of skill needed for this appears to be much lower.
Modern American house walls are nearly all constructed of nominal 2x4 (actually much smaller) studding, 1/2" or less drywall, fiberglass batting, tyvek wrap, and vinyl snap-together siding. I can disassemble that kind of wall with my bare hands. The most difficult part to get past is actually the tyvek, because it’s very tear resistant and prevents just punching through with your fist. But it’s easily penetrated with a steak knife shoplifted from the dollar store.
Windows, of course, are glass. Frames and sash are plastic, these days, more often than not. So for the large subset of people who live in typical tract homes, their houses cannot really be effectively secured without wholesale rebuilding. The only reason to for those people to reinforce or upgrade their locksets is a realization that many criminals are too stupid to ignore the door and go in an easier way.
The most effective protection against burglary and home invasion is the availability of good jobs in your geographic area. But if you can’t achieve that, get a masonry house with hurricane-proof windows and deadbolts before you start worrying about the quality of your locksets.
KW1 kwiksets are incredibly easy to rake. But schlages are easier to bump than kwiksets, in my experience.
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