The more busy I am, the less time for you, loyal visitors of the blackbag weblog.

Most people think I am busy full time with organizing LockCon these days, but that is not true. More and more Han and I are being invited by people and organizations all around the globe, and this weekend was no exception. Sometimes we are invited by manufacturers to test their locks, or because we found a flaw in it, on other cases organizations want us to teach courses and classes. We traveled quite far this weekend, and had a very intense but interesting time.

The funny thing is all the people that invite us have something in common: they love to read the latest news on this blog, but prefer not to be mentioned on it.

It will be a great relief when we have LockCon in 10 days orso. An event we can write about in full 😉

We are getting a better and better idea about the safe-tech corner at LockCon. The latest suggestion from St. John Goldfinger is to have a small pin-and-cam(wmv) system made especially for the presentation at LockCon. This system will of course only open one specific kind of (popular UK) safe lock, and it will be ideal for study, demonstration and practicing the pin and cam system. The fee for this pin and cam tool will be 100 euro or less (including the safe lock). Of course there will be some of these tools be available to play with for people who can not afford to buy one or do not want to make the investment.

Time is running out, and preferably St. John, Paul and Jord would like to hear from you asap if you want to accept their offer for ‘lab and fee’.

What we also determined is what kind of locks we will use at the lockpick championships on sunday. This will be a mixture of popular Dutch locks. The locks were collected from Rob Zomer’s 24-hour lock service, and I will make sure the locks are clean and tested.

As I am busy with 1001 things … sorry for the short posting …

It is straight forward yet elegant … the new LockCon logo is here (thanks to Charlotte Wels):

The idea is to have LockCon t-shirt (and other merchandise) made, as well as a special edition t-shirt for people who do some volunteer jobs….

I was already given a ‘golden SSDeV’ pin because of my work in promoting locksport. But in general the only people wearing these pins are champions of one of the German locksport disciplines. And up till yesterday, nobody outside of SSDeV earned one that way….

For more then ten years German based SSDeV is organizing championships, and for all that time nobody outside their community managed to win one.

Until yesterday, when my dream came true. I finally won a German SSDeV game. In his case the impressioning championships (but frequent readers of this blog could have guessed that). And I really earned and deserved my golden pin the right way!

Besides winning the games, I also managed to break the ‘time record’ that was previously owned by Peter Danilov (05:35). I opened my lock in 05:13. And … in this time even managed to file two keys! My first key was cut too deep, so I had to remove it from my handle and change it for a new one. I still do not understand how I managed to file two keys and break the ‘fastest time’ record, but it for sure explains the blister on my finger.

Looking back on it, I must say I relatively quickly mastered impressioing. My first serious blogbosting dates from January 17, 2007. I admit I invested a lot of time, and must have files at least five hundred keys from that day on. The moment of pure bliss yesterday was worth the efforts …

For level of completeness: The second place went to Ronald Mayer in 10:51, followed by good old Arthur Meister in 10:52. That is only one second between the second and third place. Fourth place went to Dörthe Clemens who was really thrilled by opening her lock in 13:00. Fifth was the person I feared most at the beginning of the games: Dr. Manfred Bölker had an off day and opened his lock in 15:24. Sixth was André Matuschek in 38:40. Last one to open the lock in the 60 minute limit was Micheal H. in 43:54.

At the ceremonies, SSDeV president Steffen Wernéry publicly congratulated me and said he was very happy for me. One sentence later he said (with a smile) that the outcome of this event was a disgrace for the German organization. For the first time ever, a “non-SSDeV’er” became ‘Meister’. He promised ‘a nice reward’ for the person who would bring back the impressioning title to Germany at the Toool.nl organized LockCon event next month. In other words: there is a price on my head 😉 Well … I am not loosing any sleep over that. On the contrary, it is one of the biggest compliments I received in a long time.

Lets see if at LockCon this tradition of ‘non Germans’ winning lockpicking championships can be continued. I know for a fact we have some good (and fast) lockpickers at Toool.nl, and the list of highly skilled lockpickers coming from other countries is quite impressive too. And we all know it can be done now….

It was hard work, but the LockCon site is up. Most information is available now, and we will update regularly.

So visit http://www.lockcon.com to find out more about the event ….

Ok, domains are secured, so here is the name for the new event: LockCon
Another domain I collected is: blackbag.toool.nl 😉

Currently the toool.nl site is undergoing extreme maintenance. As LockCon will be part of this new and improved Toool.nl site, I am asking a little more of your patience….

And for those curious about the keyway king upgrade: there is progress …
(I think you can now see what the modification is going to be).

We filed the domain names for the event on Friday, but so far we have not gotten a confirmation yet.

So hopefully the site and schedule will go live tomorrow (Monday) ….

Organizing an event the size of the (formerly known) Dutch Open takes a lot of my time. So still no official updates on that, although the outlines are getting clearer and clearer by the minute….

I still receive a lot of feedback on my keyway king milling machine. Many people are curious what the modification is, and if the device is already in Amsterdam. I can be clear about that: it is still work in progress. My good friend modifying the devices sends me pictures from time to time. The idea behind that is to make some sort of ‘modification manual’ for other keyway king owners. The last image my friend mailed me was called ‘destruction‘ …. ahum … I assume it will take some time before the device will be in Barry’s blackbag lab. But knowing my friend, it will be worth to wait …

Furthermore I learned audio of all ‘last hope’ presentations is online now (for a little while already). A great (free!) service, allowing everybody to learn from the wonderful speakers and presentations. If you want to hear the story behind the ‘skin-pression’ image you see above, you can listen to the presentation by Han and me at the last hope in high quality MP3 and find out.

At DefCon I was interviewed (in Dutch) by Brenno de Winter from ‘ICT roddels‘ (ICT gossip). Click here to listen to the Dutch interview.

No, don’t worry. There will be an event in Sneek this year (Oct 9,10,11,12). It just will not be called ‘The Dutch Open’.

What is missing is a good name for the event. What started as a ‘simple’ lockpick championship turned out now into a multiple day conference that also happens to hosts the championships. More about that on the bottom of this post.

And we are not ready to release a full detailed program for the Dutch Open. The rough outlines are there, but the fine details are missing.

Here is some info already:

I am very proud of the people that will give a presentation at the event in Sneek this year. Just like last year, Peter Field will kick off the open with a 4 or 5 hour presentation about various locking mechanisms from around the world. And to clarify: Peter started off last year by saying he was here to talk about locks, not how to bypass them. It is very clear that he learns from us how we think we can bypass certain techniques, yet will not talk about vulnerabilities he might know off. Another heavyweight presentation will be that of Marc Tobias and Tobias Bluzmanis. They will explain in detail how they cracked the Medeco codebook and how to pick and bump some of the locks. For this purpose Han and I managed to purchase a collection of Medeco bi-axial locks and keys, and even have a special key cutter that can cut angled cuts. In other words: enough material to see if the Tobias hacks really work will be available. Besides Peter and the two Tobiases, Matt Fiddler, Mike van der Stelt, Jord Knaap, Paul Crouwel, St.john Goldfinger, Nigel Tolley, Michael Huebler and hopefully handcuff wizard ‘Ray’ will give presentations.

Besides the missing name for the conference we are not sure how to organize a ‘safe combination lock contest’. Giving every attendee a different lock and having them all open it at the same time sounds a little unfair. As no two locks are alike, it will be a matter of chance who has got the lock that marks easiest. On the other hand, having one or two combo locks available for people to try upon will cause people to have to wait a long time before they can compete. And once someone successfully opened the lock, he could (in theory!) tell a friend and have him open it in ‘an amazing time’. Or you can change the combination of the lock after a successful opening, but that will also cause it to be more or less difficult as the previous combination (as no two combinations are equally difficult on a lock). If people have ideas about how to solve this in a fair matter, or have experience in this kind of game, I am very interested to learn from them.

Of course there will be a classical Dutch Open lockpick championship as well as an impression championship.

And then there is the issue with the name for the event. Looking at the event, the following is taking place there: presentations, championships, exchange information on an informal basis, making new friends and contacts (internationally) and getting drunk on ‘free’ beer. The question is what would be a good name for such an event? It is not a requirement, but it would be nice if Toool was part of the new name for this event. So far, people have come up with the following names and acronyms: Toool-Con, Lock-Con, unlock-con, openlock-con, Lock 2008, LockFest, LockLands, Dutch Toool Symposium, Toool’s annual Alter State, Annual Alter State meeting, Alter State Symposium, The Dutch Lock Symposium

KEYHOLE (Knowledge Extends Your Handling Of Locks Europe) or replace Extends with Excites or Expands
‘TOOOL International Networking Gathering’
TOOOLS (The Open Organisation Of Lockpickers Seminars) or sessions or
P.I.C.K. 2008 (Penetrate, Investigate, Communicate, Know)
P.I.C.K 2008 (Prevent Intrusion, Cultivate Knowledge)

If you prefer one of the above, or (even better) think you can come up with something more suitable, we would love to hear from you (in the comments).

There will be a Toool meeting on Wednesday regarding the event, and if all goes well a full scheduled program will be posted on this weblog real soon. Stay tuned …

So … back from Las Vegas and still not fully recovered from it. The heat is overwhelming there, and recovering two jetlags in a couple of weeks is taking it’s toll.

But nevertheless we had an extremely good time and learned to know a lot of people. Besides the people I already knew, the people from ‘Fool’ pleasantly surprised me. Very friendly, very knowledgeable, and most important: they seem to have ‘the drive’. Hopefully they will make it to the Dutch Open in Sneek this year. We are currently very busy planning the Open, and next week’s posting will be a long one informing you about it.

As always my suitcases were loaded to their limit when coming back. Got a lot of tools and gadgets, and a lot new blanks for my collection. But what is more important is that I now got a device to create my own blanks! I took advantage of the low dollar and purchased a ‘keyway king‘. It is a horizontal milling machine that comes with 16 different cutting wheels. The idea is you measure the cuts in an existing key or keyway and then try to reproduce them on an uncut key (a true blank with no grooves in it). It is also an ideal machine to cut grooves in existing blanks as some manufacturers only use a few ‘basic blanks’ and just take away some grooves to make them fit one specific profile.

The device is currently still in the US as it was too heavy to carry with me. And a very good friend is making modifications to this machine that will make it much more easy to use and will ship it when he is ready. Of course I will share the details on how he modified it with you when the device arrives …

Now packed my bags for a few day’s Berlin. At least I will be in the same timezone now ….