Dear friends, We are happy to announce the date for LockCon 2024. The event will be from 17th to 20th of October 2024 at De Werelt Garderen. This is the same venue as last year, which was then known under the name Westcord Hotel Garderen. Registration isn’t open yet, but hopefully this announcement will help you plan ahead. Hopefully we will see you in October, LockCon Team ..read more

At the impressioning championships in Germany at Wendt, organised by SSD e.V., I noticed somebody using a light I had not seen before. Since my own light/loupe is incredibly old and almost falls apart, I decided to buy one as well. It’s the “Maginon Tischlupe TL-120”. I bought one for €27.32 including shipping from Germany, with that price it’s worth to give it a shot. I set up a little working space to compare my old light, which has a TL light, and the new light, which uses LED. Both are flexible. The Maginon has a nice heavy base, but you can also attach it to a table clamp (included with ..read more

Hi all, I would like to share a presentation I’ve worked on for quite a while. The talks were on electronic safe locks, and a starting point for lockpickers to get into picking electronic locks. For Hackerhotel 2024 I’ve decided to create a summarized version to inspire others to pursuit electronic security research, and apply the knowledge on electronic locks. The talk, linked below, has two main topics; Opening electronic locks with Ketchup, so-called liquid spiking, and attempts in reading the memory of the 8051 chip in the early Kaba-mas X0 locks. X07 to X09, specifically. When I find time ..read more

Hugo and I taught Safe cracking to a group of eleven at Hackerhotel 2024. It was great sharing the knowledge and inspiring others. Much respect goes to the attendees, which after a busy conference still had energy to take on this mighty challenge. Every training needs to start with a good basis. We started with an introduction on what safe locks are about and how they operate, specifically group two safe combination locks. From there, we built knowledge from practical examples and exercises. From simply operating the safe lock by dialing 4L-3R-2L-1R with a known combination, to exploring cont ..read more

Walter and Jan-Willem successfully completed the UKLS January challenge, and like to share the lessons learned as well as show off the 31 locks. The challenge is to open a lock, every day, for the days of January. This is a good way to get in the consistent lockpicking practice, and challenge yourself to pick more difficult locks. You can find a longer explanation of the challenge in the blog released earlier this year. (https://blackbag.toool.nl/?p=4023). Picking a lock a day has helped me to get use to my new thick acrylic Moki handles, and taught me a few new picking tricks. As the month pr ..read more

The January challenge is a lockpicking game ran on the UKlocksport forum. In short, the challenge is to picks/impressions/opens one lock a day for the days of January. The rules say to post pictures daily and not to play catch up. As in, to pick a lock every day, not just 31 in the month of January. You can extend your lockpicking streak, if you so wish. Some people extend the streak by a few days, others do a full year. One exemplary lockpicker, Toni, picked a lock a day for 1093 days straight, which is three days short of three years! Furthermore, Toni started a new streak of several hundred ..read more

Hi all, I want to take the opportunity to look back at the year 2023, and discuss our achievements of the last year. The first post on Blackbag of the year was on a modified electric heater. While the post was off brand (as in: not a lock), it helped several pickers to save hundreds of euros on the heating bill. I’ve used mine ever since. Our first event of the year was in February, a luxurious hacking experience at Hackerhotel. It was a good conference where we talked with our friends from other Dutch Hackerspaces. The talks were everything from community discussions to creativity and securit ..read more

In learning lockpicking try to get all advantage you can get. A good first step is to learn as much as possible about the lock. For example, You should disassemble and reassemble the lock a few times, but looking at pictures on the lpubelts or lockwiki are good options as well. The next step is to assemble the lock with fewer locking elements, pick it, and increase the difficulty after each success. This is a well understood practicing method for pin tumbler locks, call progressive pinning. I’ve built several progressive locks for myself and for teaching lockpicking to others. Of some locks, I ..read more

Yesterday, the yearly “Festival ACF” was held in Paris, France. This is a combination of lectures, workshops and competitions held by the ACF (Association des Crocheteurs de France), the French Locksport group. I believe this must be the 4th or 5th time I visited. It was good to meet old friends and make new friends. The first lecture I saw was from a pentester, talking about a red teaming assignment (that did not involve physical security). Next was a historical overview of pump locks from Fichet-Bauche. After that, the lockpicking championships were held. About 25 people participated. In the ..read more

The Dutch Open 2023 Disc Detainer competition was held in a self-timed format. Throughout LockCon, the participants worked on getting the best times on the five Disc detainer locks: 001 Fort Knox, 002 Parkside, 003 No-name, 004 Abus Plus, 005 Abus Plus with butterfly disks. We used the Sparrows Disc detainer pick with a 3D printed spacer. One of the Sparrows tools was modified to allow tensioning lock 004, the Abus 37/55. Nitiflor won the competition by opening all the locks and won a Sparrows Vorax set. ImSchatten360 opened all locks as well, but spend more time in total and won the second p ..read more