Back in Amsterdam now, but only for a few hours. Currently at Schiphol
airport waiting for my flight to Barcelona. There is a CryptoPhone
booth this year at the 3GSM congress and I am one of the people
running it.

Anyway, about Kevin’s lockpick business cards….

He was willing to demo picking locks if I was able to reliably open
locks with his picks. If you want to see what happened you have to
watch the following video: Lockpick business cards (WMV) or on Youtube.

Reporting live from the IT-Defense conference in Leipzig …

Tonight I received the coolest business card ever.

Kevin Mitnick will be speaking tomorrow morning at It-Defense, and we met each other at Dinner.

When he gave some people his business card they immediately directed him into my direction.

It was nice to meet him again, and he will join me picking locks tomorrow and try his own business card picks.

Hopefully I will have it on video for you.

And I will try to find out who makes these cards. It could become pretty popular since it is a brilliant idea.

And it looks like the quality is decent too. Lets see tomorrow if they are any good ….

We are on our way to it-defence in Leipzig Germany. A nice conference
with the best of the best speakers in the field of IT security.

I was invited back after giving a presentation last year. And I must
say I have good memories of it. Nice and friendly people and good
ambiance in a first class hotel.

This time I am not a speaker on the main track, but just for the small
and cozy round table talks. During these talks anything can be
discussed. From lockpicking to special locks or even CryptoPhone. And
in the meantime I will set up a lockpick training table for people to
come and pick, bump and impression some locks during the breaks.

For that it is nice I yesterday received my Kroeplin poco 2F measurement
device. Right on time. This little gadget will allow you to take quick
and very easy measurements from a key while impressioning.

More on the conference in the days to come …

This ‘Bodenpanzer’ four bearded lock is something special too.
According to Oli it is one of the most secure safe locks ever made,
and one of the Nazi’s favorite high security locks.

It is a pretty rare and unique lock, and for a key alone people pay hundreds
of dollars on e-bay. And it is not an item you will see there often.

This blackbag video will shed some light on the lock an its inner working…

http://blackbag.toool.nl/video/bodenpanzer.wmv (WMV 38 Mb)

Too bad I missed the German CCC congress end of last year.

Arthur Meister was there, doing his presentation on Stasi tools and
techniques. This presentation was first shown during the Dutch Open
2006, but now Arthur was invited by the CCC to perform there too.

As you might know from previous blackbag postings the internal Stasi
code name for the tools and techniques to open locks was ‘himmel
Schlüsseln’ (keys to heaven). CCC offers you a chance to see Arthur
demonstrate these ‘keys to heaven’. His presentation is available
online (for free). Not sure how long it will last, so act quick!

23rd Chaos Communication Congress “Who can you trust?”
Speakers: Arthur Meister
Language: German
Schedule Day 3
Room Saal 3
Start time 23:00
Duration 01:00

Schlossöffnung bei der Staatssicherheit der DDR
Werkzeuge und Vorgehen der STASI

Arthur Meister erläutert das operative Vorgehen und die speziellen
Werkzeuge zur Schlossöffnung, die von der Staatssicherheit der DDR
verwendet wurden. Von der opartiven Vorbereitung, über die Erstöffnung
bis zur Herstellung von Nachschlüsslen werden speziell von der STASI
entwicklete Werkzeuge und deren Einsatz gezeigt.

ftp://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/23C3/video/23C3-1759-de-schlossoeffnung_staatssicherheit.m4v

Laser track keys always look impressive. But in fact they are only
simple wafer locks that look fancy. I wrote about decoding them a
little while ago, and even made a video of the decoder tool in action.

No need to explain how Oliver Diederichsen defeats these kind of lock:
by impressioning! In his book he writes about impressioning these locks using
modified normal (metal) laser track keys with a dremel tool.

I witnessed some new and innovative techniques he developed. Instead
of using relatively hard metal keys he now uses a special kind of two
component material to fill up a prepared blank. The properties of this
‘two component moldable metal’ are perfect for impressioning. When
hardened it is stiff enough to operate the lock and keep wafers in
place. Yet it will crumble when under pressure and leave beautiful marks.

See for yourself how it is done, step by step in yet another exclusive blackbag video.

If you know anything about bumping locks you know it is not going to work on
lever and wafer locks. So car locks are more or less immune to bumping.

Or so you thought!

It seems specific type of Mazda cars can be bumped open real easy.
And with that I do not mean bumping the lock, but the door of the car!

According to an article in mobile magazine: “A rash of Mazda 3 owners
have fell victim to a sneaky method of forced entry to their zoom
zooms. When returning to their vehicles the passenger side door has a
dent, and all of the items once in their cars, are now gone. No glass
smashed, no door locks jimmied, just a side blow to the door will
grant entry to the thief.”

And: “According to a Mazda dealership that wishes to remain anonymous,
it works by someone creating a large blow in just the right place on
the door panel. It will leave a dent in the door of course, but this
dent goes past the door frame, to the lock assembly mechanism and
activates the linkage also tricking the computer into thinking that it
was legitimately unlocked by your key or remote.”

Wonderful … isn’t it ?!?

I found some rare video footage of the pioneers of this technique… click here.

I think by now we all know what an enigma cipher machine is. After all
it is the star in many war movies and a classic in cryptography.

And now I finally know what type of lock it was equipped with. I think
it is quite ironical the German device was locked with a UK chubb lock.

The lock itself is a piece of art. It can be re-keyed on the fly. Just
open the lock with it’s key, and close it with a new key. Now only the
new key can open the lock. Simple and elegant. A pure brilliant design.

Look at the video clip to see a cutaway model of the lock in action.

* UPDATE: Oli mails there is a misunderstanding. It is not an Enigma lock after all …

> The guy from chubb told, that this lock was used by UK government to store
> high security stuff as the enigma machine, which was taken from one german
> submarine by the UK military.

> Sorry for my bad explanation in Hamburg, but that should be corrected –

** Update 04/08 we finally had our hands on a real enigma and opened the lock!

You sometimes have to work hard to make the best of it.

Wednesday evening we were visited by AT5, the local Amsterdam TV
station. The lady doing the interview seemed not really interested and
shot the item on routine. She did not want to learn the names of the
tools and kept referring to them as ‘them little iron thingies’.
I think native Dutch speakers can hear by the tone of her voice how
interested she really was.

As with all media she kept asking about criminals visiting Toool, if
we ever steal bikes etc etc etc. Sigh ….

The item is online at: http://blackbag.toool.nl/video/kort-amsterdams.wmv

Feel free to play it when you are having difficulties getting to sleep.
I guess it can be a great help for people suffering from that.

Still I am glad we do not have Fox news covering the Dutch lockpick scene.

Recently Fox covered lockpicking, saying ‘security experts are
outraged‘ because of free downloadble lockpick video’s that are
available trough youtube. Funny this clip is brought to you by … Youtube!

And a small update regarding the impressioing rush: I am definitely
back to earth. I wasted four blanks on an Abus without opening it. And
the last two tries I really paid attention too.

I had to know what I did wrong and picked the Abus and took it apart.
It seems the combination was real low. The code was 8 9 8 7 6. And I
did impress it right, except for the last pin. That went too deep. Weird.

And just a few minutes ago I did not open an EVVA five pin lock (at
the first try). So it seems like I still got a lot to learn.

Ah well … that is what makes life interesting….

I must admit you almost lost me. I became a poker addict and was
sucked into the wonderful world of online poker.

However, visiting Oli this week changed my ‘poker mode’ into an
‘impressioning mode’. Impressioning is at least as addictive as poker.

Yesterday evening I practised some more, opening DOM and Nemef (both
five pin locks) and … a ‘cross key lock’.

These cross key locks normally are easy to bypass with a special tool.
However, there is a new range of locks with a so called ‘profile latch’.
Instead of a ‘cross’ the key’s profile looks more like a little swastika.

Since bumping does not work on this lock (because of a loose core’) I
was focused on impressioning it. To get the first marks on the lock
was not easy, but after that it showed it’s marks relatively easy.

The lock I opened at the first try was a LIPS. My second try on an
Ikon lock did not get me my ‘starter marks’. Since I only had two
blanks that was the end of the exercise ….