We regularly give lectures and workshops at conferences and for companies. Contact us if you are interested. Last week, we were at the Hack in the Box conference in Amsterdam, where we taught people how to lockpick. They even included a lockpicking challenge in the Capture the Flag competition. Here is a picture of the lock we used for that.

Every year, Toool NL has a competition that is only open to Toool NL members. A box of around 25 locks travels to all meetings where members can try to pick the locks. What makes this quite different from regular competitions, is that you can get to learn the lock. You are allowed to improve your best picking time throughout the year, figuring out what tool works best and in what order you need to set the pins.

We assembled 26 locks this year, ranging from used locks with no apparant brand name to factory new locks. The Best lock was donated by Christina, some other locks were donated by Eurokey and Locksystems in Eindhoven, thanks! Last years competition was pretty stiff, so we settled for what we believe are slightly easier locks, but time will tell if they really are.

The competition page is at https://toool.nl/competitie2017/.

Day #2 almost blended into day #3, the last day of the event, filled with lectures and a competition, just like the previous days. Mr. Cherepov showed his safe lock that uses a matrix key. Decoder talked about how he created a tool to pick the DOM Diamant lock. Jaakko talked about his research on safe combination locks that could lead to such locks being opened in a few minutes.

After that, we had a lever lock competition. Last time, this was an impromptu thing, this year it was a real competition with a record number of participants. With only 2 minutes per lock in the first round, this was quickfire picking. Still, all the 10 groups had at least one person open a lock. The fastest 10 then tried to open six locks in the final. Only Lars succeeded in opening all six, winning him first prize.