01 Will people on this newsgroup give me information about picking locks, etc.?
Description
This article is from the Locksmithing FAQ, by Joe "Spike" Ilacqua spike@indra.com and Henry Schaffer hes@ncsu.edu, major data collection effort by Scott Anguish sanguish@digifix.com with numerous contributions by others.
01 Will people on this newsgroup give me information about picking locks, etc.?
Yes and No. These is a serious debate, based on serious
principles. Most experienced people here are quite willing to
discuss the basics of lock construction and operation. Few (if
any) are willing to give specific answers regarding opening a
particular lock or safe - without knowing the asker or having
other evidence that the inquiry is legitimate.
Another balancing act regards the general effect of information.
As Joe K. put it succinctly, "On one side there are the idealists
who believe that even weak security should not be further
compromised without good reason; on the other there are those who
believe that weak locks should be forced out of the market.
There's never going to be agreement here... can we just agree that
reasonable people can disagree, and have done with it?"
People have contrasted locksmithing "security by obscurity" with
practice in the software arena (in which it has generally been
considered to be misguided and therefore be bad for society.)
Exposing flaws as a social good breaks down when there are
hundreds of thousands of current owners of the product who don't
know that the flaw has been exposed. Even if they find out, there
is another big difference. This is the cost of correcting the flaw
(upgrading.) Installing the patches on your copy of software takes
a bit of effort, but you don't have to throw out and purchase a
new physical product (such as a lock.) The manufacturer of the
lock is pretty certain not to make it available for free.
Basically you have to buy a new item and have it replaced, and
this adversly impacts users, many of whom do not have the budget
to correct the flaw. Therefore publishing the security flaw costs
users *much* more for a lock than for a piece of software.
And the fact is that a nominally flawed product _does_ provide
adequate security against the unmotivated and ignorant who are the
primary folks attacking physical security systems (as opposed to
the motivated and clueful who attack electronic security and can
do it from a distance without physical presence).
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