I have a plastic shed thing in the yard in which I keep bike racks and stuff that has a padlock on. It's easy to open anyway if someone wanted to nick the contents, so the padlock is really a visual deterrent rather than an actual security feature. It also had another padlock (closed, but not blocking anything) that I have never had the key to (previous owner's). I've always wanted to take if off, and wondered if my neighbour had any bolt cutters to do it with.
He said he didn't but he's a skateboarder (dodgy bunch 🙂 ) and he said that *ahem* his friend* used to just use two spanners to force them when they were younger and they, erm, needed to do that kind of thing :O
So I tried it with two stupidly cheap and really rubbish Chinese forged spanners. As I forced a little I heard a crack and saw something fly off. I was sure it was the spanners. It wasn't. It was the lock. It was so comically easy that I was staggered, I barely had to force (obviously the fairly hefty spanners offered a bit of lever, but even so it was far from physical). It wasn't a cheap rubbish lock either, and looked fairly solid. YouTube is full of videos of the technique.
Are all padlocks vulnerable like this?
*Possibly a euphemism for himself... 🙂
Are all padlocks vulnerable like this?
Brass ones particularly are. Some designs will be intended to resist this more than others. If you want to protect a padlock it really needs the hasp to be hidden inside a steel box so it is inaccessible. Padlocks where the moving part is a straight bar, or the whole device is circular are usually considered more secure.
It's not difficult to bypass most cheap padlocks in some way or another. As you say, they're largely a visual deterrent.
I've got a TSA luggage padlock on my desk at work (I brought it in as part of a bigger discussion around security). On a first attempt picking it with a bent paperclip I opened it in about 30 seconds. Using a lock pick I can pick it in literally a fraction of a second, it is shockingly easy.
I’ve got a TSA luggage padlock on my desk
In my experience, the TSA are the biggest threat to my luggage, so their locks are pointless even if if they were secure.
It's basically the padlock equivalent of cranking a d-lock apart with a car jack- you can build a padlock to resist it but it's kind of a blind side attack so a lot don't do it. And also it's an attack that owners tend not to know about so it's kind of like thatcham and magazaine tests and all that bullshit testing chains with hacksaws and karate chops and declaring them top secures, and not testing how they stand up to massive boltcutters.
Aside; I've ended up with some very cheap alarm padlocks- they're rubbish as padlocks but they make a bloody awful noise and if you buy a handful (£6 each) you can attach them to allsorts- beside a stronger lock, or onto a dropper post or a pedal or something.
Yup brass locks are not good with this kind of attack.
Even easier to do locks with a nail gun ( YouTube it ).
I play with lock picks when im bored sometimes and it's surprisingly easy to pick some locks. It's a hobby honest 😀
We have a massive padlock on the gates into the car storage compound across the road, damn thing must weigh several kilos! I reckon the only way through it would be a cordless disc cutter, but the shower of sparks and the racket produced might alert the 24-hour security facing the gates that something untoward is going on...
Hydraulic bolt croppers are silent and will crush anything.....