I have a lock in my hand, a little tension-wrench lever braced in it with one finger, and I'm wiggling a little pick tool inside it trying to coax the pins open.
I'm laughing, of course, because I figure there's no way a rank amateur like me would ever be able to.... and then it goes snick, and turns. An actual physical wave of pleasure washes through me. There's something eerily seductive about this lock-picking business.
This – figuring out how to break into physical locks -- is a favorite activity for some hackers in their spare time, when they're not breaking into something digital. I'm getting a short lesson by the good folks at the "Sportsfreunde der Sperrtechnik Deutschland," a 10-year-old competitive lock-picking club, here at the Chaos Communication Camp to show off their picking skills, sell a few lockpick sets, and advertise for their national championships coming up in October.
There's a whole championship event in Germany, with different categories (padlock, freestyle, etc), and a whole range of styles. Some pickers depend on the electric gizmos seen in James Bond, other lock fu masters can open almost anything with just a few little slivers of metal. Speaking as someone who loses their their house keys nearly as often as Apple releases new iPod models, this seems like inspiring news.
The lock I've just picked myself is a five-pin model I'm told is common on internal doors in Europe, and is even occasionally – unbelievably, I'd now say – found as an external lock. I fiddle with it again, and have it down to about 10
seconds after a few minutes of practice.
Others are much harder, I'm told. Some are even advertised as virtually unpickable -- but of course, that just makes it more interesting to find ways to pick them, as happened to one particularly high-profile manufacturer last week at DefCon.
Getting cocky, I join the other half-dozen people sitting at a table, trying their hand at harder locks. Sadly, but probably fortunately for the world, I fail completely.
Maybe I'll come back later, fortified by a German beer and bratwurst. That's got to help the coordination somehow.
