At least a second YouTuber has sent a lock to the LockPickingLawyer in an effort to design a pick resistant lock.
In 2021, I reported on a rather neat story about two creators on YouTube. It was a really interesting story about an engineer who runs the “Stuff Made Here” YouTube channel seeing if he could make a pick resistant lock, but wanted to put it to the ultimate test. He sent two locks to a professional lock pick who runs the YouTube channel, LockPickingLawyer.
LockPickingLawyer has picked numerous locks and did give high praise for the design. He noted that the lock design is, to his knowledge, completely unique and not something he’s ever seen before up to that point. He also noted at the time that he had a lot of fun picking the lock as well. For those who know LockPickingLawyer, that is very high praise. He then described his techniques for defeating the security measures that were put in place and proceeded to pick both locks. Stuff Made Here responded by saying that he intended on making a version 3 of the lock in question, though we haven’t really heard anything since regarding that project.
As I noted during my report, this is the kind of collaboration between those who design security and people who circumvent such security measures that is extremely beneficial for everyone involved. When the person who breaks through security measure is able to offer feedback for improving a security design, that leads to much stronger security that society, as a whole, can benefit from.
This collaborative approach doesn’t always happen, however. Instead, we sometimes see instances where a vulnerability is reported by a concerned third party and the response is to send legal threats to the person reporting the vulnerability. For multiple reasons, this is not helpful as it not only shoots the messenger, but it also discourages disclosure of security vulnerabilities in the future. This gives those with actual bad intentions an even broader window to work with in the end which isn’t helpful for anyone.
While we haven’t heard anything about Stuff Made Here making progress on his new lock, another YouTuber has apparently stepped up to the plate to try and create a lock design that would be resistant to modern picking techniques. This lock was created by Works By Design. In his video, he talked about how he was actually inspired by Stuff Made Here trying to make an unpickable lock. Rather than go for a design that would be financially viable, the idea is to make an over-engineered lock just to see if there is a design that makes it extremely difficult to pick. The video can be watched here or in the embed below:
The story follows in a similar manner to what Stuff Made Here did. He created a lock he figured would be unpickable, spending a great deal of time trying to bump up security so that only the key will work. From there, he tested the design with a professional lock pick he personally knew. The lock picking friend, who managed to defeat the previous lock he designed, was given 35 minutes to try and pick the lock. After trying numerous different techniques such as bumping and raking the pins, the picker was unable to get in. Users in the comments section noted that the lock design sounds impressive if he was unable to feel the pins moving or clicking.
This is thanks to a rather interesting design feature of using ball bearings to push against the pins instead of a spring design. The idea is that if one pin is set, trying to set a second pin would cause the first pin to fall out of place because the ball bearings are meant to simulate a fluid. This is one of a number of interesting features in the lock design.
Satisfied that he did a respectable job, the Works By Design YouTuber then created two additional copies of the lock. The first lock was sent to LockPickingLawyer. The second was sent to the lock picking friend for him to toy with. A third was sent to members of Lock Pickers United for them to try and pick as well.
As of this writing, we haven’t seen anything from LockPickingLawyer about this lock, but I think there are certainly members in the lock picking community who are rather interested in seeing how he is able to pick this one or if this could potentially be the first lock he is unable to pick (which would be a pretty big surprise, I’m sure). So, it’s safe to say that there is some anticipation to be had for what LockPickingLawyer is able to come up with.
