Lock Pick Village 05/02/2015

[Big Jesse]

I'm posting this in the Locksport Local thread because both the Houston, and the Austin Lock Picking Clubs were hosting the lock pick village at the BSides San Antonio today.

I worked till midnight the night before, then drove down around 5am, to beat the traffic from Austin to San Antonio, and arrived 2 hours early. Doors opened at 8:15am. Immediately the Lock Pick Village was set up, and crowds of people were automatically drawn to the huge tables covered with well over a hundred locks. For anyone not familiar with BSides, it is a rotating security conference, hosted in several different cities throughout the year. There were many talks going on throughout the day, there were 2 talks to pick from every hour as well. I attended 2 talks total, one on email headers and how to manipulate them, another was an introduction to GPG message encryption.

Since this was my first security conference, I was a little intimidated with the computer talks, but I felt right at home when they were started and i didnt feel over whelmed after all.

Later I went back to the lock pick village and hung out with Jgor, the leader of the Longhorn Lockpicking Club, and with another guy (whose name eludes me atm) the Leader of the Houston Lockpicking Club. I learned a lot from Jgor as he showed me how to defeat various combo locks, and some intermediate concepts for picking American Company padlocks. I truely feel that I walked away from this event a better picker, and felt like a welcomed member of the Locksport Community in Central Texas.

At the end, I competed in a lockpicking contest, which at the time of my departure, I was tied for 2nd place with a really good 16 year old kid. he was much better than me, but he was stuck on the same 5200 as I was when I left. I have no doubt he defeated it by the end of the day though. Jgor didnt compete, but he picked ALL of the locks in the contest, and in under 5 minutes no less, thus I personally put him in 1st Place, though he would never consider himself a contestant. What took me 75 minutes to accomplish, Jgor did in 5 minutes, including defeating all the other locks with security pins that I couldnt get to. I was only able to defeat the following:

Master Lock #3
Master Lock #140
Abus Lock 40mm
American 1105
then I stalled on the American 5200
past that was a brinks lock with all key and driver security pins.

Below is a picture of Jgor after opening all the locks in the contest in 5 minutes...



next are pictures of the tables available, and locks being picked by new comers.





finally is a picture with me (left) and my hero (jgor...on the right) Hes the best lockpicker I know.
(if you think he looks tall, try to put into perspective that I am 6'2 tall, and hes taller than me!, hes a freaking viking for sure!) Im representing Lockpicking101 with my LP101 T-Shirt.



I highly suggest coming to a security conference to be apart of all the fun in the lock village.

Wrench.

[Legion303]

Nice write-up. How many people were at the con, and were there enough locks to go around?

[Big Jesse]

Nice write-up. How many people were at the con, and were there enough locks to go around?

there were at 100 to possibly 150 people at the con. it was small, but there were two Tracks, so two lectures to listen to at one time, so about 10 lectures throughout the day.

and Jgor combined his collection with Houston's collection, and there were literally HUNDREDS of locks, more than enough to go around!

This was my first convention, and it was 'conservative' in attendance to my knowledge, but the quality of people made up for the quantity.

[nite0wl]

First, as a huge Abus fan I have to ask if you recall which model that 40mm was? They do a lot of different designs in that size.

BSides conferences tend to be a bit on the small side compared to the larger cons which tend to attract hundreds (if not thousands in a couple of cases).
I made the mistake of entering a friendly competition with Jgor at Schmoocon a bit ago, forgetting that he had a couple of speedpicking titles, it was a sight to behold.
Helping run a lockpick village at a conference is usually very fun but also very tiring, even at the conferences that only run for 8 hours each day (the ones that run 24 hours a day will really lay you out).

[Big Jesse]

First, as a huge Abus fan I have to ask if you recall which model that 40mm was? They do a lot of different designs in that size.

i had asked jgor the same thing, and he just said "40mm", but i might have not understood what he was saying, it had a few security pins i know that much.

[jgor]

First, as a huge Abus fan I have to ask if you recall which model that 40mm was? They do a lot of different designs in that size.

i had asked jgor the same thing, and he just said "40mm", but i might have not understood what he was saying, it had a few security pins i know that much.

They're labeled no.41 and are 40mm padlocks, so I've been calling them Abus 41/40. Not positive what it would say on the packaging.

[nite0wl]

It sounds like one of these:
http://www.abus.com/us/Safety-Lockout/Safety-Padlocks/Laminated-Steel/41/%28variant%29/06376
I don't see their laminated padlocks very often so I sometimes forget about them.
I assume they had the 4-pin M1 cylinders in them but with Abus' usual insistence that even their cheapest locks have a couple of spools in them.

[jgor]

It sounds like one of these:
http://www.abus.com/us/Safety-Lockout/Safety-Padlocks/Laminated-Steel/41/%28variant%29/06376
I don't see their laminated padlocks very often so I sometimes forget about them.
I assume they had the 4-pin M1 cylinders in them but with Abus' usual insistence that even their cheapest locks have a couple of spools in them.

Heh, so I also got a tub full of "Public Storage" padlocks off a craigslist listing, unopened in package for something like $0.25 per lock, couldn't pass it up. Turns out that even though the packaging was identical, roughly half the locks were some Master knockoff super wide keyway easy to pick locks and the other half were Abus, comparable to this No.41. I hand them out for advanced practice locks now, but even disregarding the security pins the keyway is brutal on these small Abus locks. Restrictive keyway means normal picks will easily overset pins while trying to work with these. Super happy with the challenge provided for the price