All good things come to an end. And a good thing it surely was! The attendees, from all over the world, were very happy with the way LockCon turned out. We are already looking forward to next year!

I would like to thank Abus for sposoring the cylinders and blanks used for the impressioning championships. Then there were several companies who have sponsored prizes for the winners. M&C sponsored a whole bunch of their cylinders, but one really stood out: it is their new Condor cylinder, a cutaway version of it, but huge and fully functional! On the picture you see it, next to a regular M&C cylinder to give you an idea of the size. A real eye catcher! Sparrows Lockpicks sponsored coupons in worth of $800, Peterson gave away several of his famous picksets, Knaap Junior gave away polo shirts and Tokoz gave away some cylinders. Thanks!

All prize winners also received a plaque in the form of a working model of a pin stack, as per the design Kenny McElroy:

And here’s all the winners:

The second day of LockCon is also over. In between all the talking, lockpicking, lock swapping, socializing and such, there was time for workshops and lectures. Jord gave a workshop lever lock picking, to prepare attendees for the championship tomorrow. After that, Peter Field discussed techniques used by lock manufacturers, with his wonderful pictures that show the working in fantastic detail. Next, Jan and Michael talked about their adventures milling EVVA 3KS keys. Eric came across a certain motorbike lock that needed opening and he decided to use a decoder for it of which he explained the working. The evening was ended by the premiere of “American Lockpicker”, a documentary about Schuyler Towne by Ben Hartman.

And we had also time for the lockpicking championships. A whopping 48 people competed. After 8 rounds, 6 people went through to the semi-finals and three of those played the final rounds. It turned out to be very exciting, with all three contestants opening all three locks within the 15 minutes they had for each lock. In the end, Christian was the fastest and thus became the winner. Here you see him in action:

The first day of LockCon has come to an end (at least, the official program). We had a talk by MH and Lucas about Chinese locks. What threats do they try to protect against? What new techniques are being used? Featuring the famous “free spinning lock” and the “chain-key lock”. Jord Knaap had some interesting stories about his work as a safe opener. He also showed some very new safe opening techniques. Deviant talked about keyed-alike locks in the USA. Who would have thought that when the policy (or taxi companies) order keyed-alike cars, they are actually all keyed alike? Jimmie and Cocolitos talked about newly designed picks that work really well on many types of locks. Ray disassembled some wireless locks and found some interesting vulnerabilities (including a 0day). Kenny taught us all about OpenSCAD. We will not go into too much detail. The event is invite-only for a reason ;-).

And we had also time for the impressioning championships. Abus kindly sponsored a bunch of Abus C83 cylinders and key blanks. After a first round, the first six went to the final, all having to open six new locks. The winner was Alexandre, Oli became second and Jord third.

Here you see the winner in action: