Sometimes I get bizarre requests. And people can come up with the weirdest excuses for me to tell them how to open certain locks. But the mails below are the most bizarre scam mails so far. Or at least I hope it’s a scam …
Begin forwarded message:
From: johnhXXXX@hotmail.com
To: barry.wells@toool.nl
Subject: FW: Help!
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:00:24 +0300
Hello there.
We are forwarding this e-mail from XXX XXXXX. We requested a help to get out from the Rebelions leader close camp in the border to XXXXXX. The guys are comming and kill people everyday claiming to show where the goverment soldiers has gone. No one knows. but they have already killed 27 peoples up to this morning.
We can’t escape our death as the camp is made of steel shipping containers and the steel doors are all locked with Mul-T-Locks. We need the help on instruction to open this locks so we can run our death. Please Help us… We are dying….
John.
From: John HXXXX [mailto:johnhXXXX@hotmail.com]
Sent: 14 August 2010 11:13 AM
To: XXX XXXXXX
Subject: Help!
Dear XXX,
We are 124 XXX (country BW) citizen kidnaped by rebels near the border to XXX (country BW). They come and shot dead one person in front of us everyday! We was 132 up to now remained 124 only and they still come to kill us..
The building doors are all made of steel. But all the padlocks are MUL-T-LOCKS.
One of us has managed to hide her mobile phone connected to internet. We now use this phone to seek for you help to unlock these 3 locks and run away from our death.
Can you please tell us what to do with this locks to resque our life please…..
John.
Han makes friends all over the globe, and one of these friends is Mr. Frank Peter Wiersma. Back in 1986, when there were only a handful of television stations, Mr. Wiersma became a small celebrity in the locksmith community. He appeared on the popular show ‘wanna bet ?!?’, and accepted the challenge to try and file a working key to a lock in under three minutes (without trying the key in the lock!). His only tools: some files, one blank key, and just the ‘code number’ of a randomly chosen lock. In this presentation Han will give answers to questions like: did Mr. Wiersma succeed? What was his plan of attack? And just in case Han does not have the answers to all the questions … Mr. Wiersma is a guest of honor at lockcon and will be present too.
Medeco lately introduced special pins in the commercial product line to make their locks more resistant against picking and decoding attacks. And rumor has there are even more advanced pins in locks that are used in locations ‘that really matter’. These later pins are supposedly called “ARX” (stands for: Attack Resistance Xtended). What do we know about them? Do we know what these pins look like? How many different types are there? And do they really offer extra resistance against sophisticated attacks? This presentation does not have all the answers, but hopefully will give you some new insights. And a note to the public: If you have any information on ARX pins (pinning kit, individual pins, images, suggestions) please mail arx@blackbag.nl.
Julian Hardt found a vulnerability in a number of certified (and non-certified) safe locks. Due to this vulnerability, the amount of possible keys one normally should have to try (the so called ‘key space’) can be greatly reduced. In some cases the key-space goes down from 280.000 keys to a number small enough that it might be possible to just cut the few remaining keys (or build a set-up key) and open the safe with just a handful of keys. In our community it is common to report these kind of vulnerabilities to the manufacturer(s). And that is exactly what Julian did. Thing is: they just have not responded yet …. maybe this announcement helps.
This year, Till will present an old but very nice opening-tool. It is a tool to open Cromer Novum alarmlocks. And even though these kind of locks are not very common anymore, it is definitely worth showing the tool. The nice thing about this tool is that it makes use of pin and cam technology to decode the lock. Once the levers in the lock are identified, a set up key can be build to actually open the lock. Old but fascinating technology to open what was once a high security lever lock (and probably still is high security if you do not have the proper tool to bypass it). If you ask nicely, Till might let you try the decoder yourself.
In this presentation Datagram will tackle a lock many people in our community thought was ‘pick proof’. BiLock products are well known for their double sidebar locks and two rows of ‘hard to pick’ pins. In the industry they are considered one of the most high security locks. In this presentation you will hear all the details on how the lock works, how the attack was discovered, what tools were made and how the company responded when they were informed ‘there might be a small problem’. 
We are going to play one-on-one, and ‘winner takes all’. In these games two people will be playing against each other, and the one with the most locks opened, or the fastest time if the same amount of locks are opened, will go trough to the next round. If the two contestants do not manage to open any of the locks they are both out of the game. In case we have an odd number of contestants, there will be three people competing against each other and the fastest two go trough. The last man standing wins!
