Schlage Primus and Lockpicking Books

[thelockpickkid]

I am not trying to cause a war here but, I don't think this was right was it? Who are we to know if he is going to steal, what relevence does this comment have? He hasn't said anything wrong.

He says "I have a pdf copy of Locks, Safes, and Security" in his opening post.

dg

oops! Sorry, I am not a supporter of stealing Marc's work, that's for sure, I don't know how I missed that. Sorry about my post. I don't believe in the stealing of information at all, we all need to buy this so that the originator of the info is properly compensated.

Thanks Datagram for not flaming me for my oversight.

[Legion303]

And sfi72, I was looking for help, not moralism. Please don't post unless you're looking to offer the former.

Well that's the irony. I don't know how often he checks PMs, but Marc has an account here and you could probably ask him questions directly, except now you'll have to append an explanation of why you didn't save the money for his book to any questions you may have asked him.

I'm not moralizing either, but you may have heard another version of the cleaned-up phrase "don't poop where you eat."

-steve

[jrogers]

Hey guys,

I'm sorry about my posts and the responses its generated. I've since deleted the pdf. I think I understand what you are saying sfi, I'm new to picking and I don't want to spend any money unnecessarily, but I also realize that it's depriving others of their own money. I won't do it in the future.

Still, I was looking for help. I'd appreciate it if the responses were geared more to helping me than criticizing me. If you have an issue, PM me; it doesn't need to be dealt with on the boards. But thanks for bringing it up, I realize what I did is wrong.

With that out of the way, I'd still like my second question answered. I think the first has been dealt with. What books should a beginning lockpicker get to give him the fastest learning curve? Obviously, I'd rather cheaper books but if you think a more expensive book has information of quality great enough to justify it's price, I'd love to hear about it.

Once again guys, sorry about the stealing. It won't happen again.

[MacGyver101]

My honest suggestion for someone starting out is to invest a bit of money in a few good picks and skip any of the commercial "introductory lockpicking" books... I think you'll get much better value from a good amount of time reading through the various discussions and tutorials that are posted on the site here. (And, in terms of picks, you don't need a huge collection for starting out: I'd suggest either getting or making a good tension wrench, hook pick and a half-diamond pick.)

DB has an excellent tutorial for beginners that most people find very helpful when starting out, and he provides links there to a few other resources that are available on-line. (Actually, you may need to Google the "LSI Guide to Lockpicking": it looks like the link at the top of DB's tutorial may be broken at the moment.)

[Schuyler]

You'll learn faster from teachers than from books. Join us on IRC. #LP101 on slashnet.org If you really want something to read, dig through the "Pick Fu" and "Questions" sections of this forum, as that's where most of the "So I found that if I did this, then I could open this" or "I'm stuck on this, is there a technique to overcome it." It's funny, I'm setting up a lock library at a hacker space right now, and they keep asking me what books they should get...and there really aren't any I would recommend, save for Graham's High Security locks book & Ollie's Impressioning book. Even then, neither really teach how to pick locks, one is to broaden your knowledge of lock engineering & the other to teach a very specific opening technique, not directly related to picking.

I actually wouldn't recommend LSS+ to anyone to learn lockpicking, even high security lockpicking. It's a tome, with a lot of superfluous language. It's interesting, to be sure, and epic in scope, but really, after my initial fascination with it when I picked it up at a con a couple years ago, I haven't referenced it once.

Learning how high security locks function, and then reading about how various attacks have functioned over the years, is probably the best course of action for your Primus goals. Two great resources in that regard:

http://blackbag.nl/ - Barry Wels' blog. He's the head of the Open Organisation Of Lockpickers and always at the bleeding edge of exploit research.

http://toool.nl/Articles_by_Han_Fey - Han Fey, one of the preeminent lock collectors in the world, and the #2 guy at TOOOL, writes brilliant white papers on high security locking systems. He hasn't covered Primus specifically, but his papers do a better job of getting your head around how high security locks are conceived, built & iterated than LSS does. Plus, they're free!

So, yeah, Pick Fu, Questions, join us on IRC, Barry's Blog & Han's papers. And it's always worth checking out the local section to see if anyone is picking near you, or seeing if any of the clubs have chapters in your area.

For the Primus, specifically, you can find really nice breakdowns in the "Locks" section of this forum, and if you keep to the above resources, and contribute on here, it won't be very long before you have access to our advanced forums and see how various members have attempted to attack it. There you can throw out your ideas, get feedback, etc.

Good picking, and you're always welcome to drop me a PM with any questions, too.