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.

Last night I received a link to a blog called ‘locks and security’. The first thing that came to mind reading ‘locks and security’ is that it would have something to do with Marc Tobias, author of ‘locks, safes and security’. But Marc’s new informative weblog is called ‘the sidebar’.

This ‘locks and security’ weblog is clearly something else, but nevertheless a very good source of information. It shows the author’s drive for knowledge and passion to change normal locks into the lockpickers most desired object: the ‘cutaway lock’.

I really like the way he shares his thoughts on ‘plan of attack’ to certain locks and his great eye for detail. And to read he will phone fifteen different locksmiths trying to get his hand on a specific lock part for a fair price. Personally I would have tried to visit the shops instead of calling them. Although calling is a lot faster, having face to face conversations can be much more productive.

Reading ‘safe and security’ reminded me of ‘the good old days’ were I as a 16 year old kid visited most of the Amsterdam locksmiths. Asking countless questions, most of the time being thrown out of the shop without answer. However, if you just keep on trying, and learning from your mistakes, you will find someone who will recognize your talent and share your passion for locks. At age of sixteen I already made some friends with locksmiths that still are close friends and valuable contacts to this day.

As you might know by now Toool members like Han Fey and myself are pretty active writing papers and blog entries on high security locks and bypass techniques. But the fact you are here reading this probably means you know all this.

And when ever we publish something, whether it is about locks or opening methods, we always try to be as accurate as possible and come up with evidence of our claims. And I can tell you it takes lots and lots of time trying to be accurate.

One of the reason for us to want to be so accurate is that we know the complete lock industry is looking over our shoulder. Another reason is that it is directly linked to our name and reputation as we do not hide behind aliases. We are proud of what we write and take full responsibility and credits.

But maybe the most important reason to give full disclosure is to avoid not being taken serious and fueling up endless discussions and speculations about not the fully disclosed facts. In our opinion you either give full disclosure or you keep your mouth shut.

Some people have other standards. Take for instance a visitour of the Dutch Open 2006 hiding behind the initials PW.

On the item on this weblog about the RKS system he posted a comment, claiming he opened the RKS lock four times in five minutes. And stating that he is not going to tell us how he did it and wait for the lock to be released, “just like Toool always does” (?)

To me this was like someone was waving a red flag. A big one. But It tried to respond in a calm matter. It was no use.

What happened next is one of the most dark pages of my weblog. An old style flamewar followed, one with no winners.

The silly flamewar kept my mind busy for a long time, consuming lots of cycles that could have better be used doing other, more positive things.

Speaking about what was on my mind with some close friends, I came to the conclusion I will never be provoked to such a nasty flamewar ever again.

From now on I will only respond to online arguments if people back up their claim with as much technical details and facts as we do, preferably under their own name.

Last weeks/months I did spend a lot of time impressioning locks. I try to open at least one lock per day with this tecnique. And most of the time I succeed in that, and it is giving me quite a confident feeling.

But when I tried to open a relatively simple abus 5 pin cylinder that was mounted in a door, on a rainy day in the middle of the night, this confidence was nowhere to be found. Before you ask ‘why was Barry in the middle of the night trying to open a lock?’ … it was because the owner lost his key. To make a long story short, trying to open that lock became a disaster. And there is no one to blame but myself, except maybe the bad lighting conditions on the scene. I just could not see the marks.

So I went search for better light sources that could be used for impressioning ‘in the field’. A few weeks before the disastrous Abus adventure, someone pointed me out that a company called MBA (in the US) sold a special impressioning magnifier. At first I did not think much of it. After all, how good a tool can it be for just $29 US? And using the Velleman loupe on my desk I never had a real reason to look for better light and view anyway.

But now I needed something portable and started my search for the perfect ‘in the field’ impressioning aid. I tried out lots of lights and magnifiers. But not one could come close to the superb Velleman magnifier with it’s build in TL tube. The problem with all other light sources is that when you shine focused light on a blank you get blinded by the reflections. And all magnifiers with build in light I tested had some sort of focused spotbeam that was way too intense.

At around the same time Oli pointed out an aid used for examining gems. It is a simple detachable unit that fits a maglite flashlight. And inside is a filter to diffuse the light and a prism to create a nice indirect effect when looking at the object. The interesting thing is it showed great similarities to the MBA unit I ordered.

I guess there are the same, especially when I finally received them in the mail and could take a close look. I suspect MBA did modify the unit a bit to make it better suitable for examining long metal objects.

I must say I like the tool a lot. Light on the blank is the best I have seen so far for a portable unit. And the magnification of 10X is also very helpful.

Still there are some minor disadvantages. One of them is the short range where the blank is ‘in focus’ when looking trough the magnifier. It seems to require some skill to keep the blank at the right distance. But maybe this will change if you practise some with it. Another small disadvantage is that when you see marks on the blank they disappear from the naked eye when you remove the blank from the tool. This leaves you with the question where on the blanks the marks are you could see so clearly under the light. Adding some marks on the side of the blank (using a marker or make some scratch marks) will solve that problem. You only have to count at around what mark on the side of the blank you have to start filing.

Before I will attempt to open doors in the field again I will make very sure to be fully confident with this tool. And even tough I like this tool, the search for the ideal light is still on ….

‘When every second counts’ is the slogan of our national emergency phone number 112.

And I have seen it a couple of times yesterday, looking at banners when I visited the last day of the IVIC show in Rosmalen.

The IVIC is a show where police, fire brigade and other public services give demonstrations and let the public see what kind of equipment they have and what they are capable of.

And as you can see on the picture above, a standard fire brigade vehicle is also equipped to open doors and enter buildings quickly. But since there is no time to be subtle and because ‘every second counts’ these tools are pretty straight forward.

And there was a lot more to see. There were many demonstrations, and I was most impressed by a set of hydraulic cutters and spreaders. Our fire brigades use these in case of severe car crashes. They will simply cut a car to shreds to free people that are caught inside a car wreck.

What really caught my eye was a robot that is used to examine (and if necessary detonate) explosives. This remote controlled robot is the eyes of the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal).

Pretty cool stuff …I hope it’s obvious I had a good time ….

He started as a lock collector, but more and more Han Fey is asked by the industry to shed his light on development issues and review their design. And write articles to give his honest view on their products.

Han just finished an in depth document on the Robotic Key System. As always a masterpiece, filled with many technical bits of information you will find nowhere else.

The Robotic Key System is an interesting mixture of techniques. It combines the reliable mechanical disc lock system with some pretty clever electronics to align the discs and dial the correct combination. It brings key management to a completely new level.

Some people will recognize this system as the one we tested and looked at at the Dutch Open 2006 in Sneek. Some video is still available online on this site about this intriguing lock.

For those of you in the lock industry that read my weblog: Here is a nice opportunity!

The inventors of this lockingsystem, Stantonconcepts.us, is looking for a “strategic partner” to turn this wonderful idea into a commercial success…

Read all technical details on: http://toool.nl/RKS-principle.pdf (PDF, 3 MB)

Wednesday a delegation of the finest Toool members visited the Safety & Security 2007 exhibition in Amsterdam. Besides the usual lock manufacturers there was not a lot of news.

One thing did caught my eye … secure suitcases and briefcases.

As you might know I am a big fan of clever inventions and good design work. And this range of cases seemed to have both.

I spoke with the inventor, Mr. Graham Sharp, for a long time. He told me a lot about the cases and got me really enthusiastic about them.

The design is clever. Lightweight trough use of a special aluminum alloy, and a 6 millimeter thick steel cable that keeps the case in place in your hotel room or car trunk.

Also clever is the use of the extremely hard to bypass ASSA desmo lock, witch key can only be removed when it is in the locked position.

The briefcase model is secured against prying it open with a screwdriver by using a high latch that falls into a deep groove at the sides of the case. Maybe not to clear to see on these images, but very well designed.

These products are certainly high on my wish list for carrying my laptop around or when traveling abroad. Too bad I was not around on the last day of the fair to try buy the demo models (for a special price of course) ….

But then again, they were pretty lightweight so I do not think Mr Sharp had a hard time carrying them back to the UK ….

And for our Dutch readers: Het FMC was ook ter plaatse op de beurs en wierp een zeer kritische blik op een nieuwe KPN dienst.