Die Zuckerbude

Preamble

As some of you might already have guessed I am doing electrical stuff in my employment, including electrical engineering. For this purpose our company utilised Eplan Electrical P8. Other examples for such an engineering software would be Elcad, AutoCAD Electrical or WSCAD and some more. Just Google for it if you want further information.

Licensing

Eplan using USB dongles to protect their software from piracy. The dongle has to be connected to your computer in order to start the software and keep it running. Removing the dongle causing the software to stop working until you either reconnect the dongle or close it.
If you want to use Eplan on another PC you have to hand over your dongle. This is quite impractical especially if your company has multiple workstations in different places but does not want to invest in more of these quite expensive Eplan licenses.

The solution for this issue is buying a so called network license. You still will receive a dongle which has to be connected to any PC which later will serve as license server. Eplan utilizing DCOM services to achieve this.

Read more

Preamble

From time to time I crawl through multiple websites around the world searching for a good-to-go every day carry pick kit. Unfortunately I could not find one that perfectly fits my needs.
No doubt there are lots of nice kits out there like the Peterson Eagles Nest, the Sparrows Tuxedo or even the Dangerfield Praxis pick. However all of them have disadvantages for my taste. For the examples shown the Peterson handles are very thick and bulky, so they would take up LOTS of room in the pick case. The Sparrows Tuxedo does not contain a pry bar and the Praxis Kit case is way too big.
Read more

It took quite a while but finally I received a package from the US containing the 7 Pin Ultimate Adversary Practice Lock from LearnLockPicking.com.

I will not go through all details as others already did a great job putting this into a video which I will include here. Simple press the red play button in the middle to start at the proper video position.

Read more

As you may have seen on Twitter I got myself a Master Lock model 410. These locks are known to be great training locks.

Great training locks they said. You'll have fun they said…had fun for two minutes. ML 410. My guess is 5 serrated, 1 spool. #lockpicking pic.twitter.com/nGffz5LBUb

— Ben Zucker (@DieZuckerbude) June 28, 2017

Master Lock is kind a huge contrariness. They have padlocks well resistant against physical attacks but contain poor cores. You all know the ML number 3 with their crappy four pin – no security pins – core.
Then they have very weak padlocks with plastic housing like the model 410. They can be sawed open in no time. However they contain a little bit more challenging key way, a fully populated six pin core and what is even more weird is that they are all security pins.

Anyways. As stated before I obtained one of these ML410 and picked it in a few minutes. But I wanted to dig a little bit further and know what is really inside and if I can reuse the core in a much tougher padlock.

So I gone ahead and sawed the adhesive joints and cracked the baby open.
Read more

Finally I managed to defeat the last of Bosnianbills padlocks he sent me over one year ago (I do not count the two Medecos also being in the pile because picking those is way beyond my skills. I managed to pick one pin but that was it. Anyway that is a story for another post).

No, I do not have a pinning tray. If you have one left over, please send it over ;).

The core itself came in this hugh and heavy Masterlock. I removed it and put it directly into my vise as the flapping of the core in the lock really throw me off.
It may not look like something very difficult. We have four out of six threaded chambers and a stock core. No undercut or threading. Three of six key pins were serrated, all drivers are serrated and serrated spools. The The bidding on the probably one of the best you can get.
However for a beginner as I am this combination brought some trouble and endless frustration with it.

I also have to admit that I disassembled the core before using the key. This last but not least disclosed me that there were six pins in the core for a five pin key. The last pin is barely riding on the very tip of the key. Bill, you are a nasty evil man.
So I kind a knew what I had to expect. However it did not help very much.

One thing that has changed with this picking attempt was that I took an advise from the LockPickingLawyer:
Use the heaviest tension possible.
That may sound silly on a lock with serrated stuff but for some reason it worked.

For picking I used one of mad.bobs pry bars and a 0.015 deforest diamond from the Dangerfield praxis kit.

Lucky enough to get this one finally opened. Now let’s get some beer or something.

Preamble

Five seconds… Burg Wächter: srsly? pic.twitter.com/icJBHZgE5a

— Ben Zucker (@DieZuckerbude) January 4, 2017

The following text I actually wrote as base script for a YouTube video where I talk a little about the how and why I do lockpicking. Well, I never made the video and this text has already been published with a pseudonym in the context of competition at the Lock Labs Lock Picking Stories section.
Though it is still my story and as I recently got a few questions about that I decided to revisit this.
Also including a few lots of fixes. Have fun reading.

Read more