… you are interested in fraud with voting computers ….

 

 

 

Tomorrow, Wednesday October 4 at ‘een vandaag’ (Dutch Television, Ned1) an item about
fraud with voting computers, in cooperation with www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl

See the 30 second teaser on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzN3jWtsykw

 

 Han Fey did it again. Spending weeks and weeks digging trough cutaway
locks, taking them apart, examining, photographing and … writing about it.

The result is yet another masterpiece from his hand: Pfaffenhain Cutaway locks.

This document describes in detail the many different systems in use by
the German company Pfaffenhain. And the special features (like the odd
V-shaped keys) they incorporate in their beautiful high security locks.

 
 

A few months ago we visited their factory in Germany and where
impressed by what we saw. We also tested their locks to see if their current
solution against bumping works. They use specially shaped pins that do
not require any modification of the house or the core. Read all about
it at this URL:

http://toool.nl/Pfaffenhain_Cutaway_cylinders.pdf (2 Mb)

 

Our Dutch campaign against voting computers is up to speed. There is
loads of media attention and the Dutch public is starting to realize
there is something wrong with the way we use these voting computers.

As I am the person with the most experience with video (editing) in
our little campaign group it was my task to make all aired tv items
available on youtube.

This is of interest of people who speak Dutch only. We are to busy to
translate the video clips. Any volunteers to help with this?

The videos can be found on: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=stemcomputerssuck 

Yesterday Han and myself visited an Abloy service center. This is a
highly restricted area where no strangers are allowed in. But when Han
is in the house all doors open. Especially when he reveals tricks to
them they never heard of before. His knowledge on Abloy is truly
overwhelming and keeps amazing them, over and over and over again.

Yesterday he wanted to know if an asymmetric key pair could be
designed for the Abloy Protec. With asymmetric I mean there is one key
that can only open the lock (only turn counter clockwise), and the
other key can only close the lock (only turn clockwise). A master key
can be cut that will open the lock in both directions.

View the exclusive “behind enemy lines” blackbag video to learn how
individual abloy protec and diskclock keys are cut, and how asymmetric
key cutting for Abloy locks is done.
http://blackbag.toool.nl/video/abloy-keycut.wmv (80 Mb)

You could also use the video to explain people the theory behind
public key cryptography with this video. But you better leave out the
blue key that can both open and close the lock.

Somehow we lost our old stack of stopwatches. Meaning that we did not
score many good times at the ‘continues competition’ last Wednesday at
the Toool club evening in Amsterdam. We only had two or three
stopwatches left. Having said that, it was a very good day for Marnix
and Paul Boven. They both opened the Medeco Axial lock (number 14) for
the first time. Paul even improved my time on the lock. grumble …

 

 

Back to the stopwatches. We lost ours and I was looking for new ones.
Jos pointed out some local e-bay add, and yesterday at 22:00 I bought
95 pieces of high quality stopwatches. It is a good thing I could buy
so many at the same time … after all, the Dutch Open lockpick
championships are going to happen real soon now. Within a few days you
can read all about the schedule of the Dutch Open 2006 on the Toool page.

 *Small update: Walter (Toool Eindhoven) recovered the stopwatches…

A small update on some of the articles on this site.
There is one in English, one in German and one in Dutch.

 

 The first update is on the website of our campaign against voting computers.
We now have an English page on our website. And the newsletters are translated
into English too. The last one came out today.
http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/Newsletter_4_-_23_September_2006

The second update is on the German car test in the Auto Bild magazine.
A scan is now available thanks to a loyal reader of this blog.
http://blackbag.toool.nl/images/auto-bild.pdf (PDF 1Mb)

The third update is a scan from the Dutch article in ‘De ingenieur’ about
bumpkeys. http://toool.nl/INGR10_11_p64_73_Sloten.pdf (PDF 1Mb)

I hope you enjoy the material…

Ebay has the policy not to sell burglary tools. And therefore nobody
can sell our beloved lockpick sport sets on Ebay. Bummer, but we will
have to live with that. Having said that, they do not seem to have a
problem selling bumpkeys. As long as you specifically mention it is
_not_ a bumpkey but a ‘depth key’ they do not mind. The nice thing for
the seller of these *cough* depth keys is that people who enter ‘bump
key’ in the search screen on ebay will find these keys for sure … sigh …

 

 

 

And talking about Ebay … Han Fey is offering his Drumm shield and Abloy
protec lock on there. It is the original lock used for his Drumm article.
I think he will autograph it free of charge if you win the bid.

 Click on the images to be redirected to the ebay bids….

 

 

Mauer sure has/had some interesting products to offer. I must
admit I like it when people think outside the box. And that is what
the engineers of Mauer did when designing some of their locks. The
keys to some of their models are twice as long as conventional keys.
That is because they run trough both sides of the core on a euro
profile cylinder. That is right, pins on both sides of the lock have
to be in the right place before the lock will open. This improves
security quite a lot. Picking becomes very hard since all standard
picks are way too short. Using a pick gun? Forget it.
Can they be bumped? I think so but have not tried …

The first generation of these locks made use of an ordinary key. The
big disadvantage was that the keyway on the inside was a mirror image
from that on the outside. In order to lock the door from the inside a
smaller key was used (only 5 pins), that would not even fit the front
of the lock since that keyway was a mirror image.

Later models used dimple key. This was a symetric keyway, and the long
key that would close the lock from the outside could also be used on
the inside.

I am sure Han Fey will write an article about these magnificent locks
someday. Until then you will have to live with these images (zip 7Mb)

Currently (in Europe) burglars have tools and techniques to break your
euro profile cylinder in half. These Mauer locks are protected against
that too. If you take a good look on the image above you can see they
‘pre cut’ the lock. If someone tries to break the cylinder only 50% of
one side of the lock will come out. A second try will release another
25% but leave the lock intact and closed. So picking or breaking the
first part of the lock will not do you any good.

 

As some of you may have noticed there is some media attention in the
US about the Bump key technique. Aloa, the biggest locksmith
association in the world, tried to downplay the seriousness of the
threat. And some big companies like, for example, Mul-T-Lock also
address the issue. Maybe they did not read the Consumer reports test
2006 where, two out of three of their locks were opened. Even by layman.

Read their comforting words and feel safe and secure again:

http://aloa.org/pdf/bumpkeys.pdf

http://www.mul-t-lockusa.com/newsdetails.asp?newsid=51
 

Marc Tobias took the time to address these ‘nothing to worry folks’ messages.

Read his point of view in an open letter to Aloa and the lock industry.
I fully agree with him. The only thing that is missing is the word ‘AMEN’.

http://www.security.org/middle_RESPONSE_ALOA.htm 

In het dagblad van het noorden stond gisteren een artikeltje over de
mysterieuze auto inbraken te stadskanaal.

Ben benieuwd of we er ooit achter zullen komen wat de truuk is …

Klik op het artikel om het te lezen.

(English: Dutch local media report about the mysterious car burglaries)