Archive for the ‘Conference’ Category

LockCon 2017

Monday, July 3rd, 2017

LockCon 2017

We have started the preparations for LockCon 2017! We have a location, a date, a registration form (plenty of people have already registered) and we are looking forward to the event!

The medieval knight you see in the logo was inspired by the location, which is a 12th century castle. A nice location for three days (October 20~22) of workshops, lectures and competitions. As always, LockCon is an invite-only event. If you have been there before and want to come again, but haven’t registered, please do so now. Get the link from somebody at Toool.

More background information at LockCon 2017

Picking Abloy Classic

Thursday, December 3rd, 2015

I regularly give lectures and workshops about locks and lock related topics at conferences such as CONFidence, Hack.lu, BruCON, 4GH, SEC-T, Hackito Ergo Sum, Hashdays, Fri3dcamp, TEDx and more. My latest talk was also the most interesting. It was at the wonderful t2.fi conference in Helsinki, Finland.

I was there in 2014 as well. This year, I could only speak again if I’d open Finnish locks. And Finnish locks are among the most secure.. Almost everybody in Finland has ASSA Abloy locks on their door. Many Fins believe these are unpickable. So I set myself the task to open these locks.

First, I tried the H&H tool for opening Abloy. I then found out this tool does not work and simply cannot work, unless you can set the discs in order. So this was money wasted. I finally was able to purchase a tool from Citadel LockTools in the UK, that can actually open (and decode) Abloy Classic locks. These tools are handmade by Matt and look and work fantastic.

The tool comes with several tips, for different kinds of locks. I bought a few Abloy Classic ‘handbag’ padlocks and it’s interesting to see that they differ. In one, the deepest disc is locked, not so in the other. They both need a different tip on the tool.

Abloy Classic decoder

Abloy Classic decoder

Using this tool, I was able to open an Abloy Classic live on stage in Helsinki, which got me a nice applause!

Here’s a clip of when, after some practicing, I was first able to open the Classic using Matt’s tool:

Lockpick village

Monday, June 29th, 2015

Toool regularly gives lectures and workshops. This month, we were at the OWASP-meeting and Hack in the Box. Here you can see Einstein overlooking the table.

LockCon 2014 – the aftermath

Monday, September 22nd, 2014

Wow – we are all still buzzing with energy after this years’ LockCon! With a fully packed program spanning three days, there was something to learn and do for everyone. People showed up from all over the world, making new friends, discussing new locks and lock opening techniques and just having a good time in general.

An important part of LockCon is the Toool Dutch Open Championships in lockpicking and impressioning. And, thanks to Jord, this year we also had a lever lock opening competition.

Unfortunately, the impressioning competition was nullified due to irregularities. Therefore, there are no winners.

The lockpicking competition was exiting, with for the first time a Dutch winner. In an exiting final, all three final contestants opened one out of three locks within 15 minutes. The fastest time was for winner Walter Belgers, with Christian Holler getting second and Marc Bromm third place.

The lever lock competition was won by Tomás, who opened all four within the 3 minute time limit per lock(!). Oli Diederichsen became second by opening three locks, Lars Jelonnek was the fastest opening 2 locks making him number three.

And finally, the Toool competition, open only to Toool NL members, was won by Walter Belgers. The second place was for Christian Holler (quite a feat since he only had one day for it) and third place for Jos Weyers.

Our thanks go to all the participants who have made this LockCon a great event. Also many thanks to the sponsors. Abus sponsored all the locks and keys for the impressioning contest. Prizes were sponsored by TOOOL.US, Storm Lock Picks, Sparrows Lock Picks, EVVA, M&C, Knaap Junior, Oli Diederichsen and Douglas Bryant.

This year, other than previous years, we will be selling the remainder of LockCon 2014 clothing. So, don’t wait until next LockCon to see if we have reduced the price, we aim to sell the limited stock this year. Instead of T-shirts, we have made high quality embroidered polo shirts sporting the Toool logo on the front and an image of the Sneeker Waterpoort on the back. These will go for 35 euro including shipping. We also have a few VIP “key figure” polo shirts for 45 euro. To order, send your request to merchandise@toool.nl. The first few people ordering will get a LockCon 2014 badge that doubles as a pin tray, courtesy of Datagram. We’ll be posting better pictures soon.

TOOOL at HOPE X

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2014

The tenth Hackers On Planet Earth conference has just been held in New York, USA. One of the topics has been lockpicking and people from TOOOL-US as well as Jos from TOOOL-NL have been demonstrating the sport. He can be seen on the right in the picture that Hackaday put online at http://hackaday.com/2014/07/18/hope-x-lock-picking-and-lock-sport/. The official homepage of HOPE is http://www.hope.net/.

Update: video (over 3 hours!) at http://new.livestream.com/internetsociety/hopex1/videos/57118496.