Archive for the ‘Gatherings’ Category

LockCon 2024 Schedule

Saturday, September 21st, 2024

Tickets to LockCon are still available as of 20th of September. We will close the registration on the 25th of September. Please see ‘LockCon 2024 registration is open!’ for more information. https://blackbag.toool.nl/?p=4627

Hi Everyone, we are hoping you are doing well! With this blog, we like to show you this program we have created for LockCon 2024. It’s a great mix of the competition you expect, and loads of new and exciting content.

Thursday is the first day of the event, we will use this day for catching up as well as building up the conference room. The cadence of the rest of the event is talks in the morning, a competition in the afternoon, and an evening program which includes a variety of activities.

For the competitions, we have Friday evening reserved for the Dutch Open in impressioning, on Saturday the Dutch Open in Lockpicking will be held, and on Friday we will start and Sunday we will conclude all the ongoing smaller competitions: Lever lockpicking, Disc detainer picking, Felix’s Breakout and Pic Tac Toe by FoxPick, and safe manipulation. The rules for each competition are published here: https://blackbag.toool.nl/?p=4652

The schedule will be available in the conference room on large sheets of paper. The Schedule is not set in stone, where you are allowed to fill the gaps, or take the stage with your own last minute talk. Last year, a panel on RFID was assembled on Sunday to fill one of these gaps. Please discuss large changes with the organisation.

Thursday
17:00Arrival (Hotel check-in is possible from 15:00)
19:00 – 20:30Dinner (with prior reservation)
20:30 – 22:00Conference room build up
22:00 – 01:00Socializing in the hotel bar

Friday
07:30 – 10:00Breakfast
10:00 – 10:15LockCon Opening
10:15 – 10:30Dennis van Zuijlekom – Shoot all the hackers
10:30 – 11:30Zeefeene – Why Your Unpickable Lock Sucks
12:00 – 12:30Michael Hübler – 3D printing working keys for TSA008 and (all versions of) TSA006
13:00 – 14:00Lunch
14:00 – 19:00Dutch Open Impressioning competition
19:00 – 20:30Dinner
20:30 – 21:00Introduction to the evening program & ongoing competitions
21:00Start of disc detainer & safe manipulation competition by Toool
21:00Start of lever lockpicking competition by Nigel Tolley
21:00Start of Pic Tac Toe and Felix’s Escape by FoxPick
Saturday
07:30 – 10:00Breakfast
10:00 – 10:30Nigel Tolley – Hobbes Anti-Violence
10:30 – 11:00Jan-Willem Markus – Locksport stories
11:30 – 12:00Thijs Bosschert – Lockpicking in Capture the Flag
12:00 – 12:30Denes Szabo – Car lockpicking book
12:30 – 13:00Group photo – Dennis van Zuijlekom
13:00 – 14:00Lunch
14:00 – 19:00Dutch Open Lockpicking competition
19:00 – 20:30Dinner
20:30 – 21:00Eric Scaillet – Aubin’s trophy
21:00 – 23:00Walter Belgers – Pub quiz

Sunday
07:30 – 10:00Breakfast (Check out of your hotel room)
10:00 – 11:00Eric Scaillet – Lishi
11:00 – 12:00Disk detainer finals
12:00 – 13:00Nigel Tolley – Lever picking finals
13:00 – 14:00Lunch
14:00 – 15:00Foxpick’s games finals
15:00 – 16:00Safe manipulation finals
16:00 – 16:30Closing Ceremony
18:00Dinner (with prior reservation)

LockCon 2024 registration is open!

Tuesday, June 18th, 2024

Dear friends,

With this mail, we like to announce registration for LockCon 2024 to be open. The event will be from 17th to 20th of October 2024 at De Werelt in Garderen, The Netherlands. This is the same venue as last year, which was previously known as Westcord Hotel Garderen.

The program

We will welcome the attendees from Thursday afternoon 15:00 with a get-together at the bar. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we will have a program with talks, workshops, and competitions. In the program there will be plenty of room to socialize, and pick locks. LockCon closes on Sunday afternoon, 17:00-ish.

If you are unfamiliar with what we usually do at LockCon, please read https://toool.nl/LockCon and the LockCon 2023 recap https://blackbag.toool.nl/?p=4357. The schedule for this year’s event will be quite similar, where the competitions are usually in the afternoon, and the remaining program are talks, workshops, and socializing.

How to participate

LockCon is an event organized by Toool in the Netherlands for the extended Locksport community. This means, we try to be welcome to everyone with a healthy interest in the lockpicking hobby and the community. The attendees of LockCon are mostly friends, and friends of friends. You are also welcome if we have never met before. While it is easier for you to have a friend vouch for you, but this is not required.

The venue

This event is hosted at a hotel at which we have rented a large conference hall, and enough rooms to host a hundred guests. We are able to use the other hotel facilities, like the bar and restaurant. The hotel has additional facilities like a sauna, but these will have an additional charge and are booked at the reception.

The ticket price for LockCon 2024 is €430 per person, this includes three nights in the hotel with breakfasts, lunch, and dinner in the restaurant. Some options, like a single person room, have an additional charge.

Please register as soon as possible:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdNg6lzLXX669DL2Oru2Qgb6w6nqChjP95Mg45NlQAT_-kxtQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

We are looking very much forward to the event. Hopefully we will see you in October,
LockCon Team

De Werelt in Garderen | Oud Millingenseweg 62 | 3886MJ Garderen | The Netherlands.
https://dewereltgarderen.nl/
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3591498

LockCon 2024 announcement

Saturday, March 23rd, 2024

Dear friends,

We are happy to announce the date for LockCon 2024.
The event will be from 17th to 20th of October 2024 at De Werelt Garderen.
This is the same venue as last year, which was then known under the name Westcord Hotel Garderen.

Registration isn’t open yet, but hopefully this announcement will help you plan ahead.

Hopefully we will see you in October, LockCon Team

Hackerhotel 2024: Safe cracking workshop

Friday, February 16th, 2024

Hugo and I taught Safe cracking to a group of eleven at Hackerhotel 2024. It was great sharing the knowledge and inspiring others. Much respect goes to the attendees, which after a busy conference still had energy to take on this mighty challenge.

Every training needs to start with a good basis. We started with an introduction on what safe locks are about and how they operate, specifically group two safe combination locks. From there, we built knowledge from practical examples and exercises. From simply operating the safe lock by dialing 4L-3R-2L-1R with a known combination, to exploring contact points and graphing.

For this two-hour session, we worked with locks of known combination, and usually only get to complete one and a half graphs in this time. Around six graphs were completed in total, and some even finished all three graphs within the session.

While any training is mostly satisfying a curiosity, we expect this training gave the attendees enough knowledge to give it a try on their own later. Maybe even getting obsessed about it in the process 🙂

CCBY4.0 Jan-Willem Markus Toool Blackbag

Recap of 2023

Friday, December 29th, 2023

Hi all, I want to take the opportunity to look back at the year 2023, and discuss our achievements of the last year. The first post on Blackbag of the year was on a modified electric heater. While the post was off brand (as in: not a lock), it helped several pickers to save hundreds of euros on the heating bill. I’ve used mine ever since.

Our first event of the year was in February, a luxurious hacking experience at Hackerhotel. It was a good conference where we talked with our friends from other Dutch Hackerspaces. The talks were everything from community discussions to creativity and security topics. Toool hosted three impressioning workshops a day, and Jan-Willem gave a talk on experimental lockpicking techniques. Which includes, analysis of the Bowley Rotasera, and lessons learned on the Kromer protector.

Wendt hosted a well received lockpicking competition end of March. Walter and Henri competed, and several others joined for the exposition and side events. In case you have missed it, Wendt invites you to join their open house 2nd and 3rd of March 2024.

In May Toool was at the last HITBSecConf2023 in Amsterdam. Toool has hosted the lockpicking village for HITB Amsterdam from the beginning of the conference, and we made great friends along the way. It is truly an end of a decade. The lockpicking village has always been one of the more consistent and popular side events at the conference, and we hosted it again with great pleasure.

During the summer, several Toool members from the Netherlands went to Defcon and visited the lockpicking village hosted by Toool US and to promote Locksport. I, myself, went to the Chaos Communication Camp in Germany. This is the largest German hacker camp hosted by the Choas Computer Club. Jascha from Sportsfreunden der Sperrtechnik, SSDeV set up the lockpicking event, which was a great success. I’ve run a few sessions in English, it was good fun.

LockCon was in October hosted at the Westcord Hotel in Garderen. We hosted close to a hundred guests from all over the world. Where in the three days we ran four competitions, a dozen talks, and many locks picked. It was great to meet our friends again. The recap of the event is worth a read.

ACF organized their annual festival in December. Walter traveled to Paris for the event and competition and won the third price. Walter shares his thoughts in this post.

Next to all these big events, we went twice at Tkkrlab, Hack42, and several other small events. On average we have run a side event a month. Furthermore, we hosted a lockpicking meetup almost every week, as well as published several blogs on locks, tools, and more, here on Blackbag. In case you have missed them, here are the highlights.

Walter looks for interesting locks and published a series of small unusual locks. For example, Walter found a 28mm double euro cylinder from Keso which is unique as it is operated with a standard length key. This short 6-pin euro cylinder from Dom is also quite clever. The Evva Elus is also a curiosity. Given the lock has electromechanical master keying.

I’ve written quite a bit for blackbag, for example on the cutaway collection from Qikom. Furthermore, in a collaborative work, I’ve 3D printed keys for the Abloy Protec2, as well as analyzed the yet unpicked Dulimex PRO-LINE padlock.

Henri wrote about a clever implementation of multi tenant lever locks. These and other lever locks are quite rare here, sadly. It’s a wonderful, but forgotten technology, which still has a place in high security systems in the UK and Italy. Hopefully, Henri will write more about those in a future Blackbag post.

To end this list, we like to suggest reading a post with in depth technical knowledge. The report in the LockCon 2022 impressioning competition. The document can be quite useful for pickers interested in impressioning.

If you see something you like, please leave a reaction below the post. It’ll help grow the brand as well as motivate the writers to continue putting in the effort. If you want to share your project on Blackbag, do reach out as well.

Best holiday wishes from me and the rest of Toool,
May many locks open for you in 2024 🙂

Jan-Willem Markus
Secretary of The Open Organisation of Lockpickers

Toool NL Competition, 2023

Monday, October 23rd, 2023

The Toool NL competition is a lockpicking competition which is available at meetups for the members. About twenty locks are selected, and the members improve the picking times throughout the year.
Opening a lock in the best time gives ten points, 2nd best time nine points etc. The member with the most points at the end of the year wins the competition. https://toool.nl/competitie2023/

Jos, Henri, Jan-Willem and Rob made a quick start in the competition at the first meetup. At the Eindhoven meetup, Walter took the lead, and kept the top score throughout the year. There was more competition for the second and third place, and was held and lost by many. (Week by week: https://toool.nl/competitie2023/tussenstanden.html)

Walter won the competition with 215.5 points (out of 240) and received a Multipick Kronos Electropick. Tom won the second with 178.5 points and received the Multipick Elite Meister 19-parts lockpick set. Jos won the third price with 170 points and received a Sparrows Vorax pickset and a Sparrows pinning mat.

Kudos to the dozen people who have opened at least one lock in the competition!

LockCon 2023

Monday, October 23rd, 2023

From 12 to 15 October 2023, Toool organized LockCon, a Locksport conference with attendees from Europe and the USA. Here is a recap of this year’s event at the beautiful Westcord Hotel Veluwe in Garderen.

On a warm late summer day, we started LockCon. After check-in and setup at the venue, the first of guests already arrived. It was great to meet so many friends again. On Thursday evening, we dined at a restaurant at walking distance from the venue, after which we set up the conference hall for the talks and competitions. We protected the tables with stucco runner, as locks and vices can otherwise easily damage furniture. The rest of the evening was used to meet new people, catch up with friends and discuss lock topics at the hotel bar.

After a first night of not enough sleep, we had breakfast at the venue’s restaurant. The food selection was nice, from the usual bread to fruit salad, yogurt, scrambled egg, and poffertjes! Jos opened the conference by highlighting achievements of the community, including the LPU belt explorer picture archive and Locksport. Jos thanked the sponsors, Abus, Multipick, Sparrows, and Dulimex, as well as the LockCon team, who make LockCon possible.

The first talk was by Walter, who introduced the Evva Elus electromechanical temporary access function lock, and updated the attendees on the Anker 3800 research. It’s incredible what we can do with a bit of dedication and a 3d printer. There was an active debate if Anker 3800 magnets can be overlifted.

In another talk, Zeefeene shared his insights in manufacturing locks in China. From the lesson in using chopsticks to a deep dive in lock diplomacy. The highlight of the talk were the videos of lock manufacturing equipment, which showed keyway broaches to full automatic lock assembly machines. It was eye-opening as these insights are rarely shared.

After lunch and socializing, it was time to set up for the impressioning championship. Thirty-four competitors tried their skill against the Abus C83. It was nice to compete again, and it’s amazing to see how much different it was compared to the competition last year. In both finals, the majority locks opened, with several competitors opening all the locks.

After dinner, with again a good selection of food, we had an evening of disc detainers. Idanhurja gave a talk on his Abloy disc detainer picking adventures. From figuring out Abloy classic from first principles to advanced techniques to defeat other Disc locks from the same brand. The rest of the evening was filled with workshops on the Abloy classic by Idanhurja and the DaMage Fichet F3D (Not a DD) workshop by Nitiflor. We also made a start with the disc detainer competition. I’ve selected five locks, from ‘relatively easy’ to ‘unlikely to be opened’ and Sparrows sponsored the disc detainer picks.

Saturday we started with my talk about electronic safe locks. I’ve shared my insights in how you can attack embedded systems and specifically electronic safes. The target is the Kaba-Mas X0 series locks. Starting from the X07 from ’92 and building to analyzing the electronics of the X09. I’ve shared about hardware reverse engineering, but also high-end techniques like laser fault injection used to extract the memory content of the lock. While still a lot of work has to be done, progress is made.

Lubos Cech shared stories about the early European lock industry. For example, the euro profile cylinder hasn’t been the standard forever. One manufacturer designed and patented the hole through the two lock bodies to fit a mounting screw. While this is regarded as a mistake from a security perspective, the competitors worked around the patent and came up with many innovative solutions. Including clamping the lock from the side in various ways. The stories fit quite well with the lessons learned in manufacturing shared by Zeefeene.

For the lockpicking championship, fifty-one competitors joined. We started in groups of nine and worked towards a bracketed system after the first round. Many people opened locks, and some were unlucky on the table placement. A lot of pin tumblers have been picked from the following selection: Kibb, Nemef, Mastermate, Dom Plura, Destil, Era, Basi, M&C, S^2, Zi-Ikon, and Winkhaus.

In the evening, Matt Smith (Huxleypick) ran his presentation on Physical Vulnerability Research. In which he shared the things he researched over the years and how others can get involved as well. After that, we ran had the price ceremony for the Lockpicking, Impressioning, and Toool NL competition.

We ended the night with a panel on the new book Locksport. Walter, Jos, Matt, and Nigel shared their stories on what it’s like to write a book on the subject. Where the key point is: it’s a lot of work. A nice summer project, which ends up being several years of small improvements until there is something really called a book. This book is a great introduction to the hobby and will make Locksport more popular than ever.

On Sunday morning, a presentation and panel discussion on RFID hacking was organized by Torsten, Christian Holler and mh. It was well worth the time and certainly interesting to see how hotel cards function. Mh shared a list of the current RFID devices, for those willing to get started.

BugBlue shared how the badge works and how you can start working with shop price tag e-paper displays. It’s a great idea, and hopefully we will see more like it for other events. https://openepaperlink.de/

The final event at LockCon was the Pentathlon competition, hosted by the Italians from ParmaKey. Within about an hour, the competitors had to complete five lockpicking challenges. Pin tumbler picking, dimple picking, creating a key with impressioning, lever lock picking, and car lockpicking. For each challenge, a time limit is given and if you didn’t finish the challenge in the limit, you have to wait a couple of minutes before starting the next one. Participants shared that waiting four minutes after failing the impressioning challenge indeed felt punishing. Mostly, because everyone who passed the gate in time got to continue with the next challenges. In the closing ceremony, the prices for the disc detainer competition and Pentathlon competition were handed out. After which we cleaned up and said our goodbyes.

I would like to thank the people who made LockCon possible. Thanks to Sparrows, who sponsored their disc detainer lockpicks for the dd competition and a large box of goodies including various lockpicking sets. Thank you, Multipick, for sponsoring the prices for the competition, including various community lockpicking sets from Christina, Decoder, and LockNoob. As well as a ERAS disc detainer lockpick for Toool to practice with.

For as long as we work with Abus C83 in the Impressioning championships, Abus sponsors the locks and blanks for the competition. The majority of locks and blanks are used up, and the remaining will be used to teach the skill and help people new to the hobby getting started.

Thanks to Dulimex for sponsoring five Pro-Line padlocks with a Tokoz core to challenge the lockpickers with a unique challenge. The group from Italy, with ParmaKey ran the Pentathlon competition for us, and we thank them for all their effort.

Thanks to the LockCon team who made LockCon possible. Without them, it wouldn’t be possible: Jos, Holly, Chantal, Jan-Willem, and Hugo. While organizing this event was a lot of work, it was well worth it. Finally, thanks to all presenters, other organizers, and participants for joining LockCon as you made it a great event again. We hope to see you all again next year!

All the pictures are by Toool NL. Feel free to use the photos of locks under CCBY4.0, and for pictures with people, please ask for permission first.

Cutaways, and lever locks

Monday, September 11th, 2023

When we teach lockpicking we usually revert to schematics of locks, and different models for demonstrating the functionality of locks. Usually required as the core functionality is well hidden, and not often observable in action. Multiple skilled machinists have made cutaway locks for the purpose of demonstrating the inner workings of real locks.

At one cutaway themed evening, we had over 50 unique cutaways on the table. From all brands and mechanisms. Some of which even the pins themselves were cutaway.

On an evening with impressioning, a member asked for some blanks to practice with. The call was answered by the keys below. Sadly, it’ll be very hard to find a corresponding lock for the key blanks, as in Europe we have thousands of unique keyways. Even though they all look a-like.

On another evening, we delved deep in lever locks, from your classic Chubb locks to high-end safes. A boroscope was brought as to try to decode some locks by belly reading the levers. E.g. to observe the scratches on the levers and determining the length of the butting making the scratches.

The WE30C also made its appearance, one night. The lock was used on pay phones, and is remarkably hard to lockpick due to the lever blocking system, shown in the top right. As torque is applied, the blocking system engages with the levers, making all levers bind up before the lever tests the gate.

Registration for LockCon 2023 is open!

Saturday, July 22nd, 2023

Dear friends,


We are delighted to announce that registration for LockCon 2023 is open! The conference will be held from the 12th of October to the 15th of October at the WestCord Hotel de Veluwe in Garderen, The Netherlands.

The Event

We will welcome registered attendees from Thursday afternoon (check-in 15:00 hr) with a meet and greet in the bar. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we will have talks, workshops, competitions, and social events. And, of course, there will be plenty of opportunities to pick locks. We will have to vacate the hotel again on Sunday evening.

Invitation

LockCon is an event for the locksport community. Everyone with a passion for locksport is welcome, no matter the locksport group you are with. We work with the principle of friends, and friends of friends. If your friends are going to LockCon, ask them to vouch for you.

We have also reserved seats for people we have never met before. If you think you have something to contribute, or just are a very enthusiastic lockpicker who does not have the right connections yet, please contact us through the usual channels.

Hotel

As you may have seen, this year we will reside in a Hotel. This means there will be no dorm rooms, the maximum number of people sharing a room will be 4, and you will be able to suggest preferred roommates. As always, we have a limited amount of beds, so please complete the registration process early.  The price for the entire weekend will be €360 per person, and will include LockCon 2023, breakfast and lunch on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, dinner on Friday and Saturday, and lots of fun!

We are looking forward to seeing you there!

LockCon Team

Thursday October 12th 15:00 until Sunday October 15th early evening.

WestCord Hotel de Veluwe | Oud Millingenseweg 62 | 3886MJ Garderen | The Netherlands

https://westcordhotels.com/hotel/hotel-de-veluwe/

https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3591498

What happens at a Toool meetup?

Wednesday, May 31st, 2023

In the current Tool rhythm, we have one meetup a week. Both the Amsterdam and Eindhoven meetups are Bi-weekly, where we planned to have one meetup a week. We come together to discuss lock topics, compete in the Toool competition, and generally have fun picking locks.

In this post, I’d like to share pictures topics and projects that have come across at Toool meetups.

A locked coin safe was brought to the meeting. Due to the construction of the box, the lock was a very difficult to put torque on with a turning tool. We succeeded in opening the lock several times, and had great fun picking the lock in literally seconds with an electronic pick.

Once in a while, we receive donations from community members. This Sparrows vault was donated to us with the request for an upgrade to the lock, as the original served not enough of a challenge. We complied, and mounted a Kaba Mas X0 Electronic lock on the Vault.

Everyone has a go-to pickset, one which is a mix of everything. We also bring Sunday’s best to dedicated sets. For example, Moki makes great picksets, which are even better with homemade handles. Or a shiny Multipick set, be it dimple or a dual-gauge set designed by Christina Palmer. Where the only part staged about the photo is to have all the sets neatly displayed.

We went to the Association des Crocheteurs de France conference in December 2022, and brought back a few tools and picks from France. We attempted to pick the Polox-5, and Fichet F3D. Both attempts made possible by the incredible work of Nitiflor, who designed and 3D printed these picks.

Jos brought a suitcase with Chinese locks, which was gifted to him for organizing LockCon 2016. At the time, these locks were unobtainable, and information sparse. The mechanisms are very intricate with 50-element wafer locks, and cores with continuous rotation similar to the Yuema 750, an implementation we have yet to see used in Europe.

If this blog sparked interest in lockpicking, or if you have been picking and would like to join a meetup, please contact us. We are always welcome to new people, be it to teach the basics or to share advanced tricks. https://toool.nl/Gatherings