Today on Lockpicking101 a new organization was announce; LockSport International. Headed by several Lockpicking101 regulars, Varjeal, Digital_Blue and Frostbyte, the organization’s mission is to:

…promote the hobby and competitive sport of lockpicking internationally, to aide in the development of the lockpicking skill of its members, and to provide a safe and fun environment where people can meet and exchange ideas.

If you haven’t heard of locksports, it is a growing hobby across North America and Europe. The sport’s goal is to learn how to pick various difficulties of locks as quickly as possible. Locksport clubs, particularly in Europe, are well organized and even hold annual tournaments where their members try to best each others picking skills.

I will be speaking at Defcon 13 on two safe vulnerabilities, back-dialing and spiking. So, if you are interested in learning how to protect your safes (that sounds redundant, but isn’t), just hop a plane to Vegas during the weekend of July 29th – 30th.

LockPicking101.com is one of the most active on-line forums in the lock picking community. That was proven yesterday (June 24th, 2005), when the 10,000th user joined LP101.

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In fact, the growth of LP101 has been amazing. Since it’s start in the Spring of ’03, about 20 new users have been added each day:

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Certainly the interest in lock picking continues to grow.

You might think that the alt.locksmithing newsgroup would be a hive of leaked physical security secrets, but this is really not the case. Alt.locksmithing has long been frequented by professional locksmiths who both dismiss offhand any spilled information and spread misinformation in an attempt to confuse the readers.

However in 2000, a character called Freddie the Wire started opening talking about things which locksmiths had held as closely guarded secrets for years. The more Freddie posted, the larger the flame war became and the more Freddie responded with secrets. Suddenly information on drilling safes, bypass techniques, spiking, drill points, shimming padlocks, lock picking and impressioning was posted on Usenet for everyone to read.

No one will ever accuse Freddie of being a master of the English language and his postings should probably be rated PG-13 (at best). However, through the stilted wording and creative punctuation is a wealth of information.

Of course, Freddie’s legacy hasn’t gone away. Thanks to Google Groups, Freddie’s prose it still available today. Just a reminder once again that the Internet makes retrieving, retention and duplication of information (even locksmithing secrets) easy.

If you are thinking about learning lock picking and need a good book, there is no need to look any farther than Amazon.com.

Here are just a few of the titles that are available:

Of course, the one of the best ‘books’ on lock picking isn’t available on Amazon at all. It is the free, online ebook, “The MIT Guide To Lock Picking.”

Today I was purveying the wares on eBay (purely for research purposes, I don’t have an eBay addiction, I could stop anytime I want, really). And noticed that this week (like many weeks out of the year) a wealth of information is available to the budding Safe Technician (or Safe Cracker, depending on your purposes).

Now, I must say that eBay tries to run a tight ship. For instance, they don’t allow lock picks to be sold on their service. However more obscure and complicated stuff, like safe and vault supplies & information, falls outside of their bans. Although unintentional, this is the equivalent of prohibiting the sales of handguns, but allowing bazookas.

As an example, here is everything you need to learn the (nearly) secret art of Manipulation (finding out the combination of a safe, just by moving the dial), including two practice locks:

LockMaster’s Manipulation Course With Practice Locks

If you are more into physical attacks on safes (i.e. drilling and drill points) you should check out some of these excellent books by various Safe & Vault experts:

Dave McOmie Penetration Party Book
The National Locksmith’s Guide To Safe Openings
Dave McOmie’s ‘Ask Dave’ Q&A Book

Of course, my purpose of posting these here is not for your shopping convenience (these items will be long-gone in a week, anyway) but to point out that the Internet has fundamentally changed the availability of once secret and proprietary information.

In short, anyone interested in the physical security field needs to realize that the playing field has been altered, radically.

Everyday we place a great deal of trust in locks. This is because most people assume that even a simple lock represent a significant barrier to entry. Of course, we all know that a crowbar, hammer or just a swift kick would often open whatever container the lock is on, but without doing physical damage most people are stymied by a lock without a key.

However sometimes our faith in locks is not justified. Inexpensive locks on things like desks and filing cabinets are notoriously easy to open using a simple lock picking technique called raking. To open a lock using raking, you need two things; a tool which does the raking (called the rake or pick) and an ‘L’ shaped object which attempts to turn the lock (called a tension wrench).

In the video below you will see how a professional lock pick and tension wrench can easily open a typical office overhead bin. However, with just a little ingenuity, rakes can be made from many items (like a brass fastener or a printout clip) and pen tops and paper clips can act as tension wrenches. In fact, you will see that they are just as good (and sometimes even better) than professional picks for opening common office furniture locks.

Opening An Overhead Bin Using Raking (1.5 Megs)
(Unaltered, non-commercial distribution is allowed for this file)

So the next time you write your super-secret password on a slip of paper and ‘safely’ store it in your locked desk drawer, remember this tenet of good security:

Today (June 1st, 2005) Google News contained about 3870 online articles referring to ‘hackers’. Although I didn’t bother to check all 3870, I would venture to guess that nearly all of them were talking about computer hackers. Computer hackers (both criminal and otherwise) have become so well known that they are now a recognized group in our society. However the Internet has made possible the resurgence of another kind of hacker, the analog hacker.

Hardly new, analog hackers have been with us since the dawn of the industrial age. They are the fanatical inventors, builders and gadget freaks of the mechanical world (just like their computer hacking counterparts in the electronic world). Similar to Bell, Edison, Ford and others, they see physical devices as fascinating puzzles waiting to be solved, or at least, understood and possibly improved upon.

So how has the Internet changed analog hacking? Like a lot of other hobbies, it has brought together analog hackers from around the world and has created a virtual body of knowledge which never existed before. This has made possible everything from the Robotic Nerf Gun (http://www.ottawarobotics.org/nerf-cons.html) to family built solid fuel rockets (http://nar.org/index.html). However, the influence of the Internet has also put professions like locksmithing, which has been built upon ‘security by obscurity’ since the Middle Ages, under constant pressure due to leaked secrets and new research by analog hackers. This potential conflict, between analog hackers and our traditional bastions of physical security, is what this site is all about.

Some of the questions we will be dealing with include:

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