If there would be a decathlon for lockpickers, Dr. Manfred Bölker would win it for sure. Besides being one of the most skilled lockpickers on the planet, he also takes great pride in mastering all other opening techniques. But that is what it takes to become ‘master of the universe’.

And last week he showed his brilliance again by winning the 2007 German lock impressioning championships in Koln. Nothing new, as he already won in 2001 and 2004, and scored a third place in 2005 and a fourth place in 2006.

This year he made a key for the Abus C83 lock trough impressioning in a devastating time of 7:15.

And in my first serious attempt to compete in this discipline I became second. It took me 25 minutes and 5 seconds to make a working key for this lock. The reason it took so long is it took me two blanks … on my first blank I went too deep on one position.

Only three out of the eighteen people that attended opened the lock this year. Julian Hardt became third in 46:03.

Below is a picture of the original key (code 8 3 6 2 7) and my impressioned key.

(Yellow paint on blank is a security feature to identify it is an ‘original championships blank’)

A little about the lock:

In previous championships the Abus C83 lock was used. This is one of the most common locks in Germany and all Ssdev members know it inside out.

This ‘inside out’ knowledge was of no use as Abus had other plans this year. The lock was filled with special ‘black pins’ (hardened?). If I understood correctly some of them were even special SKG anti manipulation pins.

And normally the first four housing pins in an Abus are mushrooms and the last one a solid one. But not in this lock. Here the second housing pin was solid while the rest were mushrooms. Not to mention the first pin being a cut eight (normally four or less?).

Abus is a clever company. They sponsor the championships by supplying free locks and blanks, and in return learn from the feedback. I must say I admire Abus for this approach!

In less then two months we will all meet again. During the Dutch Open lockpick championships we will also spend some time on an impressioning workshop and championship. And Dr. Manfred will be there too, trying to win the only trophy missing on his chimney: that of winner of the Dutch Open lockpick games ….

* Update 3/10: Julian mentioned I made a mistake, I mentioned Abus C38 instead of Abus C83. Corrected that now. Thanks Julian!

It took them eight months, but yesterday a government appointed comity came out with their report, advising the Dutch government about the future of e-voting.

From scratch they have designed a completely new way of transparent e-voting, one that will leave a verifiable paper trail. From what we see now a decent system. A nice animation about how the new system is going to look like can be found here (or youtube).

It will take a couple of years to develop such a system, and in the meantime voting in the Netherlands will be done on paper ballots.

Of course this was big news in the Netherlands (youtube video’s RTL4 and NOS). For more news in English about this: Slashdot and Engadget wrote about it and for news in German visit the CCC homepage.

I had noticed the site of newsparkling tools in Singapore some time ago, but have just been too busy to look into it and order anything.

But ever since someone demonstrated me their nifty tool to open some models of Mul-T-lock locks I am going to place a big order soon!

So first of all there are picktools for mul-t-locks, but also tools to pick disc locks, cut-away locks and even a special bump-key set for dimple locks.

In other words: interesting stuff … I will keep you posted on what I order and if it is as good as it looks like.

I was very pleased to be able to play with one of their mul-t-lock picks for 30 minutes and shoot some video (youtube or quicktime 22 MB) of it. Unfortunately there were only two locks available, to test this tool on. I was told one of the locks was a brand new and certified one, the other was a cut-away model. And both could be opened relatively easy.

And I am not sure how long this tool will be effective. What I have learned about the Mul-T-lock company (and its engineers) is that they are continuously improving their product. So a trick that might work on a lock produced yesterday, will not work on a lock that is produced tomorrow. And that is the way it should be. You can not prevent people finding exploits to your locks, but you can do all you can to prevent the exploit to work on future locks.

Time will tell ….

* Update 27/09/2007: Time did tell, and fast!

Yaron from Israel wrote in the comments that the tool seems to work well ‘in the field’ and that already burglars have been arrested in possession of this tool. Yaron was kind enough to scan the newspaper article (in Hebrew) and translate it in English. Thanks Yaron!

Yesterday I visited the German impression Championships in Cologne (Germany). But more about that later. For now I just am proud to be able to show you what Julian Hardt wants to share with you….

Julian worked on ‘comb picks’ for some time and created some pretty impressive ones….

For those new in the field: A comb pick is more a bypass tool then it is a pick. The whole idea of this tool is to lift the pins and lift them all the way up, out of the plug. If all pins are cramped up in the housing of the lock, there is nothing blocking the sheerline and the plug can rotate.

Besides creating comb picks for some of the more populair padlocks like Viro and Abus, he also made a comb pick for the Abus XP1 family. As some of you might know, the XP1 has a very difficult keyway. The pins are more or less trapped in the key profile, and if you want to pick it you have to approach them from the side. A very tricky and delicate lock. But Julian’s comb pick also is a piece of art!

Julian was honest enough to mention the comb did not seem to work on all models he tried. Sometimes the length of the top pin plus the bottom pin and the spring is just longer then the canal in the house of the lock. Still I really like the design and skills involved to make it…

I am sure the visitors of this humble weblog will enjoy this video (YouTube) showing you all about Julian’s comb picks (Quicktime video 45 MB).

Personally I am just very curious how long it will take the lock-tool industry to copy this concept and come out with a set of comb picks. I am putting my money on less then six months before the first ones show up on the market, maybe even sooner ….

Place your bets (in the comments) ….

Steffen is having some sort of blog too. On the internal pages of www.ssdev.org he writes nice German articles that are worth the read.

And trough a TV item on discovery channel he found out what ‘blackbag’ truly means. I must admit, the TV item he found is pretty neat! It shows a gentleman by the name of Mr. Ed Tickel, an FBI legend when it comes to opening locks. And in the video he demonstrates his favorite opening technique: impressioning!

And for those of you who wonder how NDE (non destructive entry) operators spend time on a lock in a busy street: He answers this in an amazing story on how he made a key to a lock while he was hiding in a big refrigerator box. Thinking about it, this makes a lot of sense. The hole in the box should not even be bigger then a hand, and if you are afraid evil mobsters will shoot trough the box, you can even have it armour plated….

One other retired FBI agent was a so called ‘wire man’. He was responsible for planting the microphones and camera’s. A job that nowadays would include the installation of keyloggers and knowledge on how to back up other peoples hard drives…

For more information, just google for ‘Operation Strawman’. Unfortunately there is not much background info I could find about Mr. Ed Tickle. And that is too bad because I would not mind inviting him as a speaker for the Dutch Open lockpick championships on 23/24/25 November 2007….

The full video with the interview can be found here (68 MB .AVI)

Yesterday I finally collected my MacBook pro. While I am still busy installing software on it, I could not resist to try out the video editing software. First attempt can be found here (Quicktime 15 MB).

And a couple of weeks ago Paul Crouwel and Rob Zomer organized a safe cracking weekend. People from all over the globe gathered at this ‘invitation only’ party to share knowledge on the holy grail of safe cracking. Some pretty serious safes were cracked by the attendees (like a GJ Arnheim, Rosengrens European, LIPS VS 80, Victor (build in +- 1910) a LIPS VAGO and so on).

Paul used this weekend to try out some of his new tools. Amongst them were some strongarm hardplate drill-bits, a mini drill rig that allows you to apply perfect drill tension and an ITL2000 safe combination dialing robot.

Especially the mini drill rig and strongarm drill bits came out real well. Before they got the drill rig, a more primitive (yet effective!) method of applying pressure to a drill was used.

One other tool that was used was a thermic lance. Pretty spectacular to see (and smell) in real life. (click on image to see quicktime video 18 MB, or here for youtube)

A lot of interesting discoveries were made over the weekend and we are currently working on an article for the Savta magazine to list some of them.

For us the biggest surprise was to find one of the safes still was filled with jewelry! Fortunately the owner of the safe was present and was happy to receive his goods back undamaged.

Just a few kilometers away from our party some other safe owner was much more unhappy. A jewelry shop in a black market hall was burglarized, and some extreme brute force was used. The thieves must have used a pretty hefty grinding wheel (diamond blade?) to cut a hole in the side of the safe. The sad thing was no insurance company could be found to insure the poor entrepreneur because of the location of the market. And the security guards responsible for the place received multiple alarm calls but never bothered to thoroughly investigate why the silent alarm kept going off. Very fishy if you ask me …

A news item (including Rob Zomer’s expertise) can be found here (Quicktime 15 MB) or on youtube.

It is a good thing all 15 of the ‘safe cracking weekend’ attendees have a solid alibi…

P.s. I am curious if you think quicktime video is prefered over my old Windows Media files …

Hey, you are still here reading my blog?

To be honest, blogging can be a big burden sometimes.

But the good news is: I am still alive. Over the past few days more and more people were worried about me not posting on this blog. And rumor has that some others were hoping for it to disappear from the face of the earth for ever. Too bad, blackbag is here to stay …

The thing is, so much is happening that it is hard to keep up. But here is a first attempt to work trough the pile of articles I have/had in stock.

Han’s booth at Aloa was a big success. A few serious lock manufacturers showed interest in Han’s products, engineering skills and his pool of knowledge. I would not be surprised if one of these companies makes Han an offer he can not refuse in the near future…

And I did scout some interesting stuff for you at Aloa! In the weeks to come I hope to make footage available of a mul-t-lock pick, some 13 song tools and big boys doing arm wrestling with Abus keychains.

One special guest at Han’s booth was Marc ‘I will kill you if you publish these pictures‘ Tobias. Marc was clearly in his element at Aloa, but only until he spilled one liter of soda on Han’s booth, ruining a big stack of flyers.

I am eagerly waiting for my new macbook pro. The idea is to have better video editing software and compress video in a more friendly video format then before (was win media 9). And there is quite some video to be edited. But please do not hold your breath, as work and family life are taking up a lot of my time ….

Yesterday Han and I landed in Charlotte, North-Carolina. For me the plan is to visit the Aloa 2007 exhibition while Han is having a booth there.

I have already seen lots of familiar faces and had quite some interesting conversations. If there are nice new tools or other novelties I will make sure to report back here.

Stay tuned ….

It took the lock-tool industry a couple of years to copy German Ssdev member Kurt Zuhlke’s invention. Kurt developed the reversible pick gun. His invention was mentioned in the bumpkey whitepaper we published at the beginning of 2005, and I have had many requests ever since from european locksmiths that wanted one.

The reason for that is so far all pick guns on the market were targeted to US locksmiths. In the US locks are mounted pins upward in the door while in europe it is the other way around and they are pointing downward.

The problem most european locksmiths have is that if they want to use a pickgun on a door, the handle of the door is in the way. That is because with a US model pickgun you have to keep the gun upside down to be able to use it.

But not anymore … now there is a solution! (for sale on the free market)

Brockhage has created a pickgun especially designed for the european market.
And it works! At home I managed to shoot open a nice range of locks, all in the upside down position.

A friendly locksmith that has been bugging me for a ‘kurt Zuhlke edition’ for a loooong time was glad to try it out too. And he liked it, eventough he could open locks faster and more reliable with his own ‘us version gun’. Not so strange if you keep into consideration he used his old one on a daily basis for over twenty years …

* update 08/2007 There is some discussion about how well this gun actually works. Some German lockpickers (who’s comments I respect highly) do not like the gun and it’s design at all. They called it names I will not repeat as this site. On the other hand, two locksmiths who open doors on a daily basis have reported they do use with success when their conventional pickgun can’t make the angle.

A few weeks ago we were asked to see how long it would take us to swap the ROM’s in a Nedap voting computer. The exact time would be needed in a German report from the Chaos Computer Club. They did research on voting computers and their vulnerabilities and came out with their analysis today.

In order for them to calculate how long an outsider would need to hack the elections they needed an estimate on how long it would take to swap the two ROM chips on a Nedap voting computer. The complete voting computer software is loaded from these two ROMs, and the person/entity installing the ROMs on these black box voting computers has complete power over the elections. There is no safeguard as there is no ‘paper trail’ and a recount is not possible.

If you want to know more details: recently a subtitled version of a Dutch TV item became available online for those interested in the situation in the Netherlands and our atempts to hack the Nedap’s. I think it gives a nice overview.

For us doing the ‘ROM swap job’ was a fun assignment. We stopped when setting the ‘record’ to one minute. One minute per machine is a nice statement and we decided not to push the limits any further.

And of course we backed up our 60 second claim with a video clip that will only take one minute of your valuable time (in Windows Media or on YouTube).

* Update June 10: The CCC report is getting extremely good press. Read the article from the prestigious ‘Der Spiegel’ magazine.