Author: Baab

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Lockpicking practice stands…

I’ve been tempted to buy a few of these, but I’m disappointed that it only holds three cylinders.  I’d love to have one of these (or FOUR of these, preferably) that would hold five cylinders.

I built a trainer last year for five cylinders, but I built it with full deadbolts with the KIK (key-in-knob) cylinders installed into them, so it’s a bit heavy and unwieldy for portable use, especially if I had to lug around four or five of them.  

If anyone has the capability to design a 3d model of something like this, please hit me up at [email protected].

Requirements: 
* Five evenly spaced openings to fit KIK cylinders
* Each opening should have a tension screw below it with a thumb tightener, to snug the cylinder and keep it from slipping
* A nice wide base with four holes near the corners, so that it can be screwed to a block of wood or other heavier object and prevent tipping.

Update: Found the TOOOL Practice Lock Case by MikeyMakesIt, which would suit my needs wonderfully AND be even more portable, but the big players want like $50-60+ just for the bottom piece.  Somehow I feel like this should be a lot cheaper than that.

And then there’s the Locksport 5×3, which I wish I had the STL for.


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Surplus equipment

By the way, I have a shit-ton of surplus equipment I’m trying to get rid of.  A whole lot of older 1U Dell servers and older Cisco switches.  Free for the taking for anyone local.  Market value not even high enough to be worth shipping,.  But great for anyone putting together a lab.

Also if anyone wants to experiment with GE Simon alarm keypad panels, or strip them of their components, I have HUNDREDS of them.

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The rest of the Lockpick Village gear arrived today…

I was on the fence about making an investment in all this stuff, but now it will serve dual purposes.  Lockpicking practice at meetings, of course; and I’ve been asked to present a session at my day job as well.  So if you want to play, there will be four complete sets of picks and practice locks, and maybe a few extra locks for good measure, so if you have your own picks, by all means, bring them as well, then more people can play at once.

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Lock cylinders arrived today

If only these had arrived a couple of days ago, I could have had them prepped and ready to bring with me to the DC202 Social this evening.  Corinthian had a good turnout at the rum distillery, and we had some interesting conversations.  

So yeah, we’re halfway to the lockpick village capability.  I’ll repin these to be four sets of progressive cylinders, label them in order of difficulty, and bag ’em up for our first DC540 meetup.

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GoCube Kickstarter

How many of you are in on the GoCube Kickstarter?  GoCube is a Rubik’s Cube on steroids.  Orientation sensors, move transmission via Bluetooth, stickerless with speedcube mechanics.

I’m an old-school cubist. I learned the old way with the old patterns.  I’m a sub-two-minute solver on a good day.  With this invention, I’m willing to learn the new speedcubing methodologies and get my solve time down lower.  

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1928372437/gocube-the-classic-puzzle-reinvented
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The Hardware Hacker

This book arrived at my doorstep yesterday. Color me excited.  $12 something at Walmart, go figure.  He goes way into Chinese factories, manufacturing and the supply chain before getting into the hacking part of it.  Exciting if you’ve got some hardware ideas in your head.

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Another damned badge

This one is the Phase 4 Ground Trans-Ionospheric Badge, and it’s got a ton of cute visualizations on the screen, games, customizations (name and call sign), and even some actual contact logging/QSO functionality.  Another one where the maker decided to undercut the eBay upsellers by doing another run (or maybe there were just leftovers, who knows?).  Maybe this trend will keep the badge-scalpers at bay, and keep the prices down to “moderately outrageous” for those of us who can’t seem to say no.

I wish I could tell you which was my favorite of all the badges out there, but I can’t compare function to form in an articulable manner.

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Meeting prep…

You’re doing a great job with your RSVPs so far.  I’ve got 8 members coming to the first meeting last time I looked.  If you haven’t RSVPd, and you plan to come, you should probably RSVP via Meetup (or directly if you don’t use Meetup), because the room doesn’t have unlimited capacity. Also helps for planning.  Also, we’re still not listed on the official Defcon groups page. When that happens, a few more slots may fill up.

I should mention that there will be swag.

I expect there will also be a lockpicking station. Maybe a Proxmark to play with.  

If anyone is interested in helping behind the scenes, let’s meet up before the meeting, I’d love to hear your ideas.

Also, please take the poll I posted a few days ago if you haven’t already.  It will help guide meeting content.

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Teaching Lockpicking in the Desert

I had a serendipitous experience last year. The wife and I decided to celebrate a big round anniversary and a big round birthday by embarking on a rather ambitious journey. We drove to St. Louis for the eclipse, then to Burning Man.  We got there a few days early to help out with “build week.” The Burning Man stories are for another time and place, but at some point after the event opened officially, I noticed that a camp schedule was posted (we camped in a village of several camps, with a large group of mostly DC area burners).  While perusing the schedule, I noticed that there was a lockpicking class on the schedule. I asked the leader of that camp about it, and he replied, “oh yeah, there was going to be a class, but the guy who teaches it couldn’t make the Burn this year.”  Excitedly, I asked if his equipment made it without him (it had) and volunteered to teach the class.

Fast forward to class time.  I figured one or two people would wander by, so I spread out the backpack full of labeled progressive lock cylinders (1-pin through 5-pin) and the other oddball cylinders and locks on a table with some chairs near the front of our camp and sat and started playing. One or two campmates came to keep me company and play along. It didn’t take long for people to start showing up, and soon the table was crowded. I’d like to say I gave them brilliant insights and harrowing demonstrations of technique, but all I really did was explain how pin tumblers work, and a general demonstration on how to use the tension wrench with just the right amount of pressure in hopefully the correct direction, and boy were they off!  The table was aflutter with people shuffling cylinders around, saying “I’m done with 1, is there another 2 free?”  “I’m up to 4 already!”  Fast forward an hour or three (burner time is a bit fuzzy) and some 20-30 people or so (counting burners is also a bit fuzzy) successfully passed their first lockpicking class. Nobody failed, nobody gave up.

I still haven’t had a chance to thank the guy who didn’t show up. I think he’s part of TOOOL DC, may have dated one of the burners in the camp at some point or something (yeah, facts are fuzzy out there too). I was hoping to track him down at Defcon this year and thank him, but I didn’t manage to get around to it.  Hell, there’s always next year.