Lock Picking for Sport Cracks the Mainstream

May 2, 2005 -- -- For more than 4,000 years humans have used locks to secure some of their most private places and prized possessions. And for just as long, other humans have been trying to find ways around them.

Now, videogamers, hackers and others who just enjoy a good challenge, are coming out of the woodwork -- or hiding in it -- and adopting lock picking as their new hobby of choice.

Though some fear the hobby amounts to nothing more than burglary training, lock pickers claim they're not out to hurt anyone and may even help the public by exposing flaws in commonly used locks and other physical security devices.

For pickers like Andrew Howard, "lock-sports" are all about an intellectual challenge that is put on par with games like chess and compared to the '80s puzzle phenomenon Rubik's Cube.

"For me, it's about improving yourself," said Howard. "It's the challenge of being able to increase the physical dexterity in your fingers and being able to mentally imagine what's happening inside the lock."

Howard, a 24-year-old Brisbane, Australia, resident, says that like many of his lock-picking peers, his interest in picking was sparked by a job he did in network security.

"I'm a database programmer for the education department and I dabbled in Internet security for a while last year," he said.

Howard says it was a "natural progression" for his interests in computer security to expand to physical security.

"I thought it would be cool to pick a lock," he said cavalierly. "So I did and I've been into it ever since."

For people like Howard, security is like a puzzle. The idea is to make the puzzle so difficult that no man or machine can solve it.

A lock works very much the same way: the better the lock, the more complicated the puzzle, the harder it is to open without a key.

On the other side of the globe, in Alberta, Canada, another picker who goes by the alias Varjeal, enjoys picking for similar reasons, but he says that for him it's not just fun, it's revolution.