In a previous blog post Jan-Willem’s pin collection was mentioned. In this post the pictures of the pins and keys are shared.
There is no epic conclusions to this project. At this moment it’s is just a collection of photos of locks and pins. Shared with the world. Hopefully it’ll be a resource for new pickers that would like to know what they are up against. Maybe future research will use it. Where someone clever uses the fact some spools are different than others to decode the lock. Sputnik comes to mind and we think the possibilities are not exhausted yet. (If you are working on something I’m happy to assist.)
New pickers, don’t be intimidated by the key or keyway. If you look through the collection much of the pins are underwhelming. Where a Evva is known to be difficult lock it was not expected to find all standards or one spool pin. When struggling with a lock just take it apart and see what’s in there. For the next time you encounter the same lock you will know Nemef has a spool on position two (insider joke).
This collection has a few obvious biases:
The collection only contains basic pin tumblers.
Most locks are from Europe, and are from well known lock brands.
The locks are not too expensive and are usually old. Therefore it lacks fancy pins like gins and Christmas trees.
Pins/locks that are too similar are rejected. There are some duplicates as well.
This is a snapshot in time. The pinning of the locks change every few years. A good example is DOM RN with two different types of pins in this collection.
If you have specific knowledge on these locks. Please share, we are open to learning more about locks. Find us on Discord, leave a comment or send us an email.
The photos are: key, pins, key, pins. The photos of pins are arranged with the brand and number. The keys have ‘key’ in the name. The Titan with a key engraved D5474 will have the pictures: TitanD5474-1key-1-scaled.jpg and TitanD5474-1-1-scaled.jpg.
The pictures are by Jan-Willem Markus. CC BY 3.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ In short: you are free to use, modify and share these photos as long as you give attribution. If you plan on selling them or using hem in a blog/paper/book please notify us.
In 2019 Jan-Willem started with am odd collection. Not the locks, nor the keys, just the pins from a pin tumbler. Pins are in a lock and make them function. However, the pins are only observable when the owner decides to gut the lock or create a cutaway. The idea was simple: Create a collection/archive of pin tumbler pins and their keys. This required a proper way to store the pins.
To store the pins many different boxes have been tried. After many failed attempts Jan-Willem stumbled upon a hobby not to dissimilar from our own: coin collecting! The value of one €2 coin is just €2 to a consumer. While the collector is looking for a 1st edition misprint from Monaco, and not just any coin.
Coins are often stored in albums, either with or without protection. The lowest quality coins protection are two pieces of plastic film and a cardboard cutout. Often glued or stapled together. While the high end coins are with a certificate sealed in an acrylic case. Leuchtturm makes coin boxes in between the two, and at a reasonable price and the inserts are DIY, lasercut acrylic.
First attempt with Leuchtturm boxes.
To store these boxes it was decided to use business card holders, this did not go as plan and required custom holders. First made from acrylic and the second version from wood. Fifty sets of pins are created and thirty are added to the album. This is where the project was stuck for a year.
Pins in album v1
Last week was a good time to continue this project. A proper pleader album was bought. And the pins are added. This is the result this far:
Abus E90 pins in a box.Leuchtturm album.Pins neatly stored in the album.
The album has 48 pins and about 30 more sets are ready to be archived. Acrylic is ordered and the inserts will be created when a lasercutter is accessible again. The photos will be published here on Blackbag. For now you can find one key a day on twitter: https://twitter.com/hashtag/microkeys?src=hashtag_click&f=live
Toool NL has created a Discord server to keep in touch with other lockpickers in The Netherlands and meet new people in locksport. If you are interested in joining Toool or just want to chat about locks, please join and meet us on the Discord server.
Discord is a text based platform similar to IRC and Slack. It is not a forum where discussions are grouped into subjects and threads. Discord uses categories and channels instead. The style suits better suited for ongoing conversations or for fast pase communication than in depth discussion on a topic. Discord is not limited to text and can also be used as video chat or sharing photos.
Toool UK has a Discord server for several years with great success. The Toool NL server is live from January and is now open to the public.
Find the latest invite link on the gatherings page Create a Discord account. Click the invite link. Complete the CAPTCHA and write a short introduction in #introduction. The member role will be added manually, please be patient as we are not on Discord 24/7. Toool members are asked to register and send a mail to the board with the full Discord username. You can call it a 2FA.
On the server we have different roles and privileges. From member, trusted member, board, and admin. It is not the goal to gate keep but it is useful to limit accessibility to some content for newly joined. This will for instance protect against bots, scraping or spamming the server.
Do keep in mind Toool does not host the server. Do not post things on the internet that should not be on the internet. Not limited to: Personal details or secret research.
Once in a while people bring very interesting locks to our meetups. In this case an ignition lock from a classic car. The task was clear: impression a key for this lock. Taking this lock apart would pose serious challenge and risks.
As the ‘job’ was not announced in advance we had to make do with what was on hand: steel blanks, imperfect magnification, and an old file.
Complete ignition lock.The back of the lock.A working key!
Do you want to learn how to impression a lock? By special request we can bring the impressioning gear to the meetup. It’s not something we carry standard because of volume and weight.
On the Valentines weekend 400 Hackers met at a hotel in Garderen. There was the conference: Hackerhotel 2020. It felt like a huge hackerspace meetup with talks and workshops. I’ve followed the hardware hacking workshop by @Jilles_com and learned for to extreme read!
Jos was asked to do his talk om Master Keyed Systems and how to defeat them using impressioning. Summary: “Privilege escalation attack? You are doing it wrong! Use impressioning to your advantage. :)”
Left: Jos on stage. Right: Should have taped the locks to the whiteboard.
If you can’t figure it out from the summary you can find his talk on YT here.
Post by: Jan-Willem I’ve recently acquired ~20kg lockpicks, 4000 lockpicks. These where sold by a scrap metal dealer on eBay. As why he had them I can only guess. He did well for not scrap these. The picks are a bit rusty and need work to be useable. As you can imagine cleaning them all by myself will not be fun. There for I decided to sell most of them and give some away. (Yes, this project is not what a sane person would attempt.)
I’ve sold bags of 500g at LockCon. Most will be used at lockpicking villages around Europe. With the remaining picks I’ve created grabbags of about 250gram (50 picks) for the Dutch Hackerspaces. Because every Hackerspace needs lockpicks.
Lockpicks, ~4000 of them!Lockpicks packed and labelled. Ready to be shipped by Hackermail (Inter-hackerspace delivery service)
The full story can be found on: https://bitlair.nl/Projects/Lockpicks_for_Dutch_Hackerspaces Happy picking!
Czech Lockpicking Championship 2019 by the Association of Czech Lockpickers. Website: www.lockpicking.team
Report by Jan-Willem. On Uklocksport Meastro posted an open invitation for lockpickers to compete in the Czech championship. The topic is a good read, you’ll find a lengthy discussion about the rules and difficulty of the locks. I’ve decided to join the competition and booked my flight.
The conference started on Thursday evening. I flew in on Friday and missed every easy method to get to the conference easily. I’ve haggled with the taxi driver and he took me to the conference. It took 90 minutes and was the most expensive taxi drive I’ve had to date. The Taxi driver did not speak much English and told me he was a diving instructor. From driving I understood he was a rally driver too. Just before dark I arrived at the location. The competitions had started earlier and meant I missed the padlock competition.
Main building at Youth camp Nova Zivohost
The conference was held at the youth camp at Nova Zivohost with many small cottages close to the river. The competition was held in a large cafeteria like room on wooden pick-nick benches. Even the most basic accommodation was more than sufficient. I’ve slept in a small cottage with bathroom on 200m.
Moldau at Youth camp Nova Zivohost
The championship has many disciplines; Padlocks picking, cylinder picking, safe locks, and impressioning. Safelocks and impressioning where new competitions this year.
Each competition had it’s own timetable, rules, and dedicated crowd. In between the competitions there where talks on various topics, from safe locks to decoders and lock patents to locksport groups. I’ve participated in Imperessioning, group 2 safe manipulation and freestyle.
The prices on display
The Friday night was used to get to know each other. Each lockpicking group had a small talk on the country and lockpicking group. Many nationalities where present. Not limited to: Italian, Czech, Hungarian, German, Austrian and Dutch. I’ve done a small and improvised talk on Toool, shown off a few projects like ’the room’ at HackerHotel. The talks took quite a while as everything was translated from Czech to English and English to Czech. I’ve Marek to thank for translating every little detail.
Impressioning was my first competition. The pick-nick benches where a bit annoying as I could not get the right angle. I’ve brought my block-o-wood vice with me and it did work perfectly. In the first round we got one lock and 5 counted blanks. I’ve opened mine in 90 seconds and proceeded to the finals. After 7 minuted eight people opened the lock, four for each final. All the blanks where counted, all of them needed to be returned.
Jan-Willem at the impressioning championship
For the finals The Czech competition got extremely difficult locks: Fab 200, Fab 1000, Tokoz tech and Evva are no joke. These locks are restricted and wherefore I was not allowed to keep a lock, a blank or a photo of the keys. It was unexpected and quite annoying. I’ve managed to open the Fab 1000 and won the competition.
Impressioning setup.
I’ve entered the freestyle competition and it was a lot of fun, 5 minutes a lock. All tools allowed. Some of the locks where too hard. This included the Stealth key, Multilock and Xsecure (dimple). None of these locks opened on my table.
For the group 2 safe manipulation we had one hour to crack a S&G safe lock. Out of all competitors none opened the locks. I did not enter the Blitz (30 second knockout) or Cylinder competition. I used this time to talk with others at the conference. Many people have a story to tell if you talk time for them.
Table full of lockpicking equipment
The competition was a lot of fun but there are plenty of improvements to make. For me it all comes to communication but this is likely due to the language barrier. The competitors where likely overestimated, this meant that some competitions where harder than necessary. For instance if only 2 out of 16 open than the locks are too hard. Harder does not equal better or more fun.
I would like to ask to value competitions equally. Cylinder lockpicking was the larger competition. That does not mean it takes less effort to win freestyle, padlock or impressioning.
Thanks to the Czech team for organising this event. Please check www.lockpicking.team for the next event. 2020 will be LockFest and 2021 the next championship.
Certificate for winning the Czech impressioning championship
Jos has a talk about key duplication from pictures. If you have not seen it: https://youtu.be/muINcnhj1EQ For a conference there was the question: What does it take to make it into a workshop? There was little budget so we have turned it into a CTF instead of a training/workshop. This CTF has no prices and might teach you something new.
If you ever wished you could try it without being sneaky, this is your chance. The CTF is a controlled and safe environment. You are encouraged to copy these keys!
The problem: Publishing pictures of your keys is not a good security practice. Keys can be duplicated from a photo rather easily. Twitter and other social media are full of threads filled with pictures of keys. I got shared one but they’ve removed it on our advice. (Note to self: Take more screenshots.)
The CTF: 1) Get to the keys 2) Take a photo or make an imprint of it 3) Make a key 4) Test the key
Measuring tools and files will be available at the lockpicking village. We are going to help as little as possible to not spoil the fun.
There are three keys at the moment: CTF 1) Key will be published here CTF 2) Key will be placed on the table at lockpicking villages (do not borrow/steal the key please.) CTF 3) Key will be on the belt/lanyard of the Orga or instructors at the lockpicking Village
Please don’t publish pictures of the CTF 2 and CTF 3 key. You are allowed to do a writeup about CTF 1.
CTF Key 1:
Key measurements:
As there was still some ambiguity, this picture should prove be useful. Each square is 5mm by 5mm.
All locks are standard unmodified 5pin Abus/Buffo. The blanks that work are Y1, 1A (SKS/JMA), CS206 (Silca) and many others. You’ll get points for sourcing your own keys. Really, give it a try!
This CTF will run for the next months to years. Come see Toool at a conference near you. Next up: Hardwear.io, HITB, LockCon and Hackerhotel 2020.
If you want to play but can’t make it to a conference. Please send me a digital bird at Jan-Willem at Toool dt nl. You’ll be send three pictures and a post address. You can mail me the physical keys you’ve made.
I’ve tested the CTF myself. It took me about 30 minutes to make three keys from a photo. Please, don’t publish pictures of your keys, stay safe.
Jos and I (Jan-Willem) where at Bornhack.dk a small hacker conference in Denmark. Not only where the talks interesting also the quietness was welcome. Bornhack does not have multiple tracks so plenty of time to relax and pick locks.
We brought a lockpicking village in a box. A decently sized tool case with everything you’d need for a unplanned lockpicking village.
I’m attempting to learning manipulation of safe locks and brought a S&G lock and a bunch of manipulation sheets to Bornhack. It took me the better part of three days to crack it. (For a upcoming conference I’ve got an hour.)
Manipulating safes and safecracking sparked the interest of multiple people and I’ve did my best to explain the basics. What I was doing and how to exploit the lock.
Safecracking food break
Jos did his talk on post-its and invited people to join us at theFEEST village. aka Dutch village with free beer and stroopwafels. Many Danish hackers joined us at the village. It’s always fun to teach people a new skills.
Internet of lockpicks.
Note to self: Create a http://www.istodayfriday.com/ like website for lockpicking.
