Auteur: admin

  • Dutch Open 2026 – Registration Open

    Dear Friends,
    Registration is now open for the Dutch Open 2026 Impressioning and Lockpicking competitions, taking place in Arnhem on 27 and 28 June 2026. (Competition registration deadline: June 22 (23:59) 2026.) You can find the link to register in the text below.

    This year’s event is focused on competition. Unlike previous editions of LockCon, this is not a conference weekend with a packed schedule of talks and workshops. Instead, we’re bringing the community together for two days of competition, practice, and meeting fellow locksport enthusiasts.

    Schedule
    Saturday, 27 June – Impressioning
    12:00 – Walk-in & Lunch
    13:30 – Dutch Open 2026 Impressioning Competition (Dutch rules, Abus C83)
    18:30 – Award Ceremony

    • Dutch Open 2026 Impressioning
    • Toool NL Competition 2026

    Sunday, 28 June – Lockpicking
    12:00 – Walk-in & Lunch
    13:30 – Dutch Open 2026 Lockpicking Competition (Dutch rules, pin tumbers)
    18:30 – Award Ceremony

    • Dutch Open 2026 Lockpicking

    What to Expect
    The weekend is centered around the competitions. The main activities are the Dutch Open 2026 Impressioning Competition on Saturday and the Dutch Open 2026 Lockpicking Competition on Sunday.

    After the award ceremonies, participants are welcome to stay at Hack42 to socialize, discuss locksport techniques, exchange knowledge, show projects, and spend time with fellow enthusiasts. The venue will remain open into the evening, giving everyone plenty of time to meet old friends and make new ones.
    There will also be an opportunity to join a group dinner order each day. Dinner is not included in the ticket price and will be paid for individually.

    While informal knowledge sharing is encouraged and expected, there will not be a formal conference program with scheduled talks, workshops, or presentations as you may know from previous LockCon events.

    Food & Drinks
    Lunch and snacks are included.
    Dinner, drinks, and other refreshments are not included and can be purchased separately.
    Accommodation
    Accommodation is not included.
    Participants are responsible for arranging their own lodging. Arnhem offers a wide variety of hotels and other accommodation options within easy reach of the venue.

    Location
    Hackerspace Hack42
    Cruquiusweg 3
    6827 BL Arnhem
    The Netherlands
    https://hack42.nl/wiki/Routebeschrijving_Cruquiusweg

    Registration & Costs
    The participation fee will be approximately €10 per day, regardless of whether you participate in one of the competitions or simply attend as a visitor.
    Payment will be collected at the venue.
    To help us estimate attendance and competition participation, we ask everyone to register in advance using the registration form below.

    Important: This event is a competition weekend, not a LockCon conference. Accommodation is not included, dinner and drinks are at your own expense, and there is no scheduled program other than the Dutch Open competitions.

    Registration: https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/7Q+gfcl-YtfDD27ugQx8dP+hOWilNNrS-Im5Ij4+wbE/

    We look forward to welcoming competitors, enthusiasts,
    and supporters for a weekend dedicated to locksport competition.

    Kind regards,
    The Toool team

  • LockCon 2023 Schedule

    The LockCon schedule is complete!

    In the morning and evenings, there will be talks about various lock topics. The afternoon is reserved for the competitions. Starting Friday with Impressioning, Saturday with Lockpicking, and Sunday with the Pentathlon competition. Please see https://blackbag.lockcon.nl/?p=4228 for the competition rules.

    We will have flip overs with the program at the event. You are allowed to fill the gaps in the schedule and take the stage with your own last minute talk or workshop. Swapping time slots isn’t an issue either, just discuss this first.

    Thursday
    15:00Room check-in is open
    18:00 – 01:00Socializing
    21:00 Conference room open
    Friday
    07:30 – 10:00Breakfast
    10:00 – 10:30 LockCon Opening
    10:30 – 11:30Evva Elus & Anker 3800 update – Walter Belgers
    11:30 – 12:30TBD – Zeefeene
    13:00 – 14:00Lunch (sandwiches in the conference room)
    14:00 – 19:00Impressioning competition
    19:00 – 20:30Dinner
    20:30- 21:30Locksport journey with Abloy disc detainer locks – Petri Maksimainen (Idanhurja)
    21:30Start of disk detainer competition
    21:30- 23:00Abloy disc detainer workshop by Idanhurja and DaMage
    21:30- 23:00F3D workshop by Nitiflor
    Saturday
    07:30 – 10:00Breakfast
    10:30 – 11:30Electronic safe locks – Jan-Willem Markus
    11:30 – 12:00Short speak about history of lock cylinders in Czech country – Lubos Cech (catalocks.eu)
    12:30 – 13:00Group photo – Dennis van Zuijlekom
    13:00 – 14:00Lunch (sandwiches in the conference room)
    14:00 – 19:00Lockpicking competition
    19:00 – 20:30Dinner
    20:30- 21:30Physical Vulnerability Research – Matt Smith (huxleypick)
    21:30- 23:00Locksport – Walter, Jos, Matt, Nigel
    Sunday
    07:30 – 10:00Breakfast
    11:00 – 11:30Aubin’s trophy – Eric scaillet
    12:00End of disk detainer competition
    12:00 – 16:00“PENTATHLON” COMPETITION – Parmakey
    13:00 – 15:30
    15:30 – 16:00Closing Ceremony

    If someone wants to make a calendar file (ICS) and sends it to us, we will add it to this post.

  • Registration for LockCon 2023 is open!

    Dear friends,


    We are delighted to announce that registration for LockCon 2023 is open! The conference will be held from the 12th of October to the 15th of October at the WestCord Hotel de Veluwe in Garderen, The Netherlands.

    The Event

    We will welcome registered attendees from Thursday afternoon (check-in 15:00 hr) with a meet and greet in the bar. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we will have talks, workshops, competitions, and social events. And, of course, there will be plenty of opportunities to pick locks. We will have to vacate the hotel again on Sunday evening.

    Invitation

    LockCon is an event for the locksport community. Everyone with a passion for locksport is welcome, no matter the locksport group you are with. We work with the principle of friends, and friends of friends. If your friends are going to LockCon, ask them to vouch for you.

    We have also reserved seats for people we have never met before. If you think you have something to contribute, or just are a very enthusiastic lockpicker who does not have the right connections yet, please contact us through the usual channels.

    Hotel

    As you may have seen, this year we will reside in a Hotel. This means there will be no dorm rooms, the maximum number of people sharing a room will be 4, and you will be able to suggest preferred roommates. As always, we have a limited amount of beds, so please complete the registration process early.  The price for the entire weekend will be €360 per person, and will include LockCon 2023, breakfast and lunch on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, dinner on Friday and Saturday, and lots of fun!

    We are looking forward to seeing you there!

    LockCon Team

    Thursday October 12th 15:00 until Sunday October 15th early evening.

    WestCord Hotel de Veluwe | Oud Millingenseweg 62 | 3886MJ Garderen | The Netherlands

    https://westcordhotels.com/hotel/hotel-de-veluwe/

    https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3591498

  • May Contain Hackers 2022

    In the summer of 2022, the Dutch hacker community gathered at the May Contain Hackers conference. The conference was amazing, with over a dozen simultaneous tracks with topics ranging from electronics, privacy and internet security, to art and technology. The program is published at https://program.mch2022.org/ and the talks are published on https://media.ccc.de/c/MCH2022.

    For Lockpicking content, Toool organized a lockpicking village, The MCH CTF included lockpicking challenges, and plenty of exciting talks are given. Including Introduction to lockpicking and safe cracking, Anker 3800 Magnetic lock, and bumping electronic locks! More on these after a photo impression of MCH.

    Jan-Willem presented an introduction to lockpicking and safe lock manipulation.

    Talk description from the MCH schedule: Most security implementations leak information, mechanical security is no different. It takes sharp eyes, a soft touch, and a good hearing to distinguish between information and noise. In this talk we will go in depth on how locks works, and how we can persuade them to disclose their secrets, and open them without damage.

    The Open Organization of Lockpickers (Toool) is a group of nerds obsessed with mechanical security. We create, collect, take apart, discuss, and attempt to defeat locks. While we are known for lockpicking, there are many other techniques for opening locks without damage.

    This talk will focus on the language of the locks, the side channels in mechanical security systems. We will start with binding order, the mechanism to isolate the locking elements, and exploit them one by one. Then we will discuss a wide variety of other methods of gathering information and opening locks. Most of these methods are not practical, but working them out gives us great joy, and we would like to share the highlights with you.

    Walter presented his research of the Anker 3800 magnetic lock. It includes deriving master keyed systems, designing an electronic key/lock decoder, and 3D printing keys.

    Talk description from the MCH schedule: The Anker 3800 is a mechanical lock that has both traditional pins as well as magnetic sliders. Can it be opened without the key? This talk discusses how the lock works in a master keyed system and how it can possibly be defeated. It will cover decoding, picking and key duplication.

    The Anker 3800 is a mechanical lock that has both traditional pins as well as magnetic sliders. It was designed by Japanese company MIWA and is sold in the Netherlands under the Anker brand. It is a high security lock that is often used in large master keyed systems.

    I wondered: can it be opened without the key? I will present my adventures with the lock, having opened it up to see how it works, and several things I have tried to copy the key, pick the lock, decode the lock and find out what the master key looks like. The talk will include successes and failures and I will discuss designing 3D models, C&C work, electronics, Arduino programming, PCB design, and more.

    The talk is aimed at people with an interest in lockpicking. No prior knowledge is necessary.

    The write-up is found at https://blackbag.lockcon.nl/?p=3907

    mh shared his research on bumping electronic locks. As in, opening the electronic locks by using a percussion drill and custom attachment.

    Talk description from the MCH schedule: Modern electronic locks are often optimized for cost, not security. Or their manufacturers don’t do security research. Or they ignore it. For whatever reason, many current electronic lock systems are susceptible to surprisingly simple attacks. We’ll look at some of them, and at the underlying basics, so that you can do your own research.

    In this talk, we look at a number of modern electronic locks and their security flaws. Surprisingly many current systems are susceptible to very simple attacks, like the equivalent of using bump keys. Of course, there are electronic and/or SW-based attacks, too.
    We’ll look at some of them, and at the underlying basics, so that you can do your own research.
    Some of the problems have been fixed by manufacturers, but typically only for future production runs, so you will get some practical advice on how to test your own hardware for these critical flaws.

    Jan-Willem presented a basic introduction to threat modeling and uses puzzles as an example.

    Talk description from the MCH schedule: Mechanical locks are everywhere and come in all shapes and flavors. But choosing the right lock can be rather difficult. For example, what is better? A lock that is hard to pick, or a lock with hard to duplicate keys. This talk will not give you the answers, but it will help you understand the trade-offs. Furthermore, we will have fun threat modeling our locks.

    Is lockpicking a threat you should be concerned about, or is the brick the tool you should care for? Jan-Willem, from The Open Organization of Lockpickers (Toool), will share his ideas on mechanical security and threat modeling. We will make it fun and use several case studies, starting with defining a lock, threat modeling mechanical puzzles, and use several case studies where the threat was overrated. Simply put, attacks against locks range from the trivial to mastery. I’ll share multiple failed attempts of attacks that should be trivial, but were not in practice, and we will analyze them together.

  • Experiment driven lockpicking

    We are happy to present the talk Experiment driven lockpicking by Jan-Willem at HackerHotel 2023.

    The talk goes into uncovering information leakage in locks like Bowley Rotasera and Kromer Protector.
    May this talk inspire to do research and share all the interesting results.

    The slides can be viewed and downloaded below.

  • LockCon 2022 – Car Lockpicking Competition

    Our friends from Italy organized the Car lockpicking competition this year. Many car door locks, provided by ParmaKey, were picked during the competition.

    First place in the competition won a Multipick ELITE pickset, an Italian bag, and a bottle of wine. Second and third place won a Multipick ELITE pickset. All winners got a trophy, and a custom engraved PACLOCK, a book on lock history, and a lock comic book.

    Congrats to the winners!

    Lasse got 1st place
    Tom C got 2nd place
    Nitiflor got 3rd place

  • LockCon 2022 – Lockpicking Competition

    During the Saturday, we ran the Lockpicking competition. For the first round, we had eight tables with eight participants each. Which all attempt to pick locks in 5 minute rounds, where everyone at the table gets to try all locks. The first and second best of the table get to the next round, which was four tables of four. The best of each table got to compete in the finals.

    This year the competition had a wide selection of locks, from Abus, Corbin, Kibb, Iseo, Kale, Nemef, DMS, Winkhaus, DOM, S2, ERA, and Zeiss-Ikon, just to name a few.

    First place in the competition won a custom engraved Abloy Classic lockpick by Jaakko and a Sparrows voucher of €100. Second place won a mh electronic lock bumping kit and a Sparrows voucher of €200. The third place won a set of Multipick LockNoob essentials lockpick kit. All winners got a trophy, and a custom engraved PACLOCK.

    Congrats to the winners!

    Oli got 1st place
    Torsten got 2nd place
    ImSchatten360 got 3rd place


  • LockCon 2022 – Impressioning Competition

    At LockCon we ran the Impressioning competition on the usual C83 locks. (Abus, Thanks for sponsoring!) For the first round everyone has 1h to attempt the keyed a like locks. 12 people opened the locks in 20 minutes, this time. The best six went to the A Final, the subsequent six to the B Final.

    In due time, we expect to publish a report on the key bittings, pins, and the times for each lock.

    First place in the competition won a custom engraved Abloy Classic lockpick by Jaakko, and a Sparrows voucher of €100. Second place won a Multipick Artimis electropick. The third place won a set of Multipick Elite 27 lockpickset. All winners got a trophy, and a custom engraved PACLOCK, and an M&C pinning mat.

    Congrats to the winners!

    Jos opened 4 locks and got 1st place
    Torsten opened 3 locks and got 2nd place
    Lasse opened one lock and got 3rd place
    Results A Final
    Results B Final
  • LockCon 2022 – Toool Competition

    Toool NL has a competition with ~25 locks, which can be picked during Toool meetings. Each member times his opening attempts and points are awarded according to opening times. The competition ran from LockCon to LockCon, which was a bit longer than a year, this time.

    Competition archive from 2004: https://toool.nl/competitie/

    Competition from 2020: https://toool.nl/competitie2020/

    First place in the competition won a custom engraved Abloy Classic lockpick by Jaakko. Second place won a Multipick Kronos electropick. The third place won a set of Multipick dimple lockpicks. All winners got a trophy, and a custom engraved PACLOCK.

    Congrats to the winners!

    Walter got 1st place with 250 points
    Tom got 2nd place with 176 points
    Jos got 3rd price with 160 points

  • LockCon 2022 recap

    Last weekend was LockCon 2022, our annual conference about locksport. Throughout the conference we hosted talks about the hobby, in-depth analysis of Anker 3800, Zeiss Ikon WSW, Kromer Protector, just to name a few. We also hosted the DutchOpen competition on Impressioning, Lockpicking, and Car lock picking.


    This year, we had attendees from Europe, Great Britain, USA, and Australia. It was great seeing many familiar faces, and meet new attendees. In between the program, we traded locks, and shared the information we have gathered over the years. Thanks Everyone for making LockCon a success.


    We would also like to thank our sponsors. Abus has been sponsoring the impressioning competition for a long time. They helped us with Abus C83 locks and blanks for the impressioning competition.

    We received vouchers for the price pool and pinning mats from Sparrows. A wide range of lockpicking tools are sponsored by Multipick, from Multipick essentials up to Artimis electropick. For the first prices, Jaakko made custom engraved Abloy classic lockpicks available. PACLOCK sponsored Paclock padlocks with the competition name. Parmakey organized the car picking competition, and sponsored the price pool for the competition with books and wine. mh made a set of his electronic lock bumping tools available (See talk: Electronic Locks: Bumping and Other Mischief). Henk sponsored an old padlock for nr. 10 of Impressioning. M&C sponsored pinning mats. Last but not least, NoStarchPress sponsored digital copies of the soon-to-be released Locksport book by Jos, Matt, Walter, BandEAtoZ, and Nigel.

    Thanks to all the sponsors for making this event possible.

    Showing off the Multipick Artimis, their newest electropick. It was handed to Torsten as the price for the 2nd place of Lockpicking.