Locksport: A Hackers Guide to Lockpicking, Impressioning, and Safe Cracking

A comprehensive, fully illustrated guide to the fascinating sport of picking locks, Locksport is authored by five of the field’s foremost champions. Together, they’ll show you how to ethically, efficiently, and effectively bypass anything—from simple locks and safe dials to deadlocks and vaults.

Welcome to the world of locksport, the sport of defeating locks. Whether you’re new to the challenge of lockpicking or aiming for championship gold, this book serves as your definitive guide, packed with practical advice from a team of experts.

DIVE INTO THE ESSENTIALS WITH LOCKSPORT FOUNDATIONS

• How various locks work and how to maintain and disassemble practice locks 
• What makes some locks more secure than others
• The laws, competitions, and communities that make up the world of locksport

MASTER YOUR CRAFT WITH HANDS-ON TECHNIQUES

• How to pick pin tumblers and lever locks, make impressions or craft a working key from a blank, and manipulate open combination safe locks 
• How to work with picks, rakes, tension wrenches, files, magnification tools, safe-lock graphs, and depth-measuring instruments
• The intricacies of security pins, wards, dimple locks, keyways, and antique locks

GAIN THE COMPETITIVE EDGE WITH COMPETITION INSIGHTS

• The ins and outs of competition setup and tools and how to host your own competitions 
• Expert strategies for managing your nerves and gathering lock intel
• What it’s like to participate in timed head-to-head competitions, PicTacToe™, escape challenges, and other lockpicking contests

From mastering your first padlock to conquering a competition, Locksport will show you how to take your skills to the next level—and have endless fun doing it.

Jos Weyers is a world-record holder in the field of lock impressioning and a mainstay participant at LockSport events around the world.  President of TOOOL in the Netherlands and a key figure at the Hack42 hackerspace in Arnhem. Jos is the mastermind behind the beehive42.org initiative. Some people know him as the Dutch Kilt guy. Featured in the New York Times. Voted #2 in the category "Hackers and Security" of the Nerd101-list of VrijNederland June 2015.
 
Matt Burrough is a devoted locksport hobbyist. His locksport highlights include placing twice in the ShmooCon Lockpick Village competition, second place in the 2019 TOOOL US LockFest safe manipulation competition, and getting first-round opens at every TOOOL NL LockCon since 2016. During the day, Matt is a professional red team operator, and is the author of Pentesting Azure Applications (2018, No Starch Press.) He holds a bachelor’s degree in networking, security, and system administration, a master’s degree in computer science, and a variety of industry certifications from GIAC (SANS), Microsoft, and Offensive Security.

Walter Belgers is a hacker, having worked in IT security for all his life, the majority as a penetration tester and currently as a security officer at Philips. He has an M.Sc. in computing science and has been on the internet since the 1980s. He is an honorary member of TOOOL, the Open Organisation of Lockpickers and NLUUG, the Dutch UNIX Users Group. Walter likes to speak at technical conferences. He has co-invented a microcomputer without microprocessor and turned it into a DIY kit. His hobbies are diverse, but include drifting and rally driving, sailing, reading, travelling and photography.

BandEAtoZ is a GSA certified safe technician with years of experience opening safes around the world. He regularly publishes articles of interest in both the locksmithing magazine, Keynotes and in the more specialized periodical, Safe and Vault Technology, reaching safe engineers around the world. He is an active member in the Safe & Vault Technicians Association, the National Safeman’s Organization and numerous professional forums.

Nigel Tolley was picking locks and subverting security as a schoolboy, long before he had ever heard of locksmiths or locksport. However, this wasn’t a career path, and so university called, and a job as an aerospace engineer, with a side line of databases and coding, became his daily reality. He escaped before dying of boredom, but it was close!

After quitting the “big corp” world, he spent a year learning absolutely everything he could about locks. This is before the internet was quite as valuable a resource as it is today, and rather a lot of self-teaching and figuring things out happened – and most locksmiths didn’t even pick locks. As a locksmith for around 17 years now, he has watched as attitudes have changed, and has now taught thousands of people, including many other locksmiths, to pick locks at various courses, conferences and events. He has lectured and presented at everything from corporate ice breaker events to, of course, the various LockCon. Under assorted NDA he has also consulted with lock manufacturers and designers, and found many an exploit for physical security devices. A dedicated maker of many things, but especially tools.