 Hey everyone, hope y'all are doing well. Hope everyone's staying safe out there and Welcome back to DEFCON safe mode I'm nothing and Yeah, so I'm gonna be doing a video here This is pretty recorded, but I am gonna be sitting there live with you and This is gonna be going over the infamous Western Electric 30c and how I was actually able to defeat this thing so Sort of kind of slow for those of you who don't know anything about this lock And I'm actually gonna start off talking about both of these here So these locks are The result of a lot of research and development from the Western Electric Company To solve the problem of Payphones so these are payphone locks and These were put into place during a time where people were not huge fans of the phone companies and paying for phone calls and things like that So these locks were there was a lot of money that went into the research and development of these and they were designed to be very resilient to everything from vandalism to weather and just all around wear and tear and also to surreptitious entry and manipulation So these locks were designed There were a few Before these and the original patent that I'm aware of was released in 1966 And the original patent covered many aspects of these locks, but There's some things in the patent that weren't on these and there's some things on these that weren't in the patent So this first one you see here is the Western Electric 29a And this is the lock that would protect the electronics of the payphone It went in the the upper portion And secured the upper housing of the payphone where all the electronic elements were This is a five lever tumbler lock This is actually unsprung Which means that the levers do not have a spring that will turn them to their zero position And instead when you turn the key back there is a Portion on the actuator that pushes on the lower part of the levers which returns them all to the zero position And like I said, this has five levers but this big gap you see in the key here is Is a stationary ward that goes in between The front two levers and the rear three levers Which makes it so that if you were to try to reproduce a key You would have to have that gap to fit through there and also in picking This sits down pretty low. It makes it very difficult to get a picking wire behind it So it definitely makes opening this lock without the key pretty difficult Now all the levers in here had false gates as well as true gates, of course Or else it wouldn't open And Actually here I have one here That has an acrylic face on it So as you can see, there's no springs. You can't see much because of this Copper plate here that guards the levers but what you can see is when I Turn the key you can see all of those levers line up and That silver part that you see in there is the stationary ward so the The fence also has a cutout to go past that ward and Be able to open up Now this is a part of the pay phone, but I'm not going to be spending a whole lot of time on this tonight I just wanted to kind of give you a quick overview of this one So that you'd know the differences between this and the 30c so the 30c is Actually a lock with a pretty interesting history behind it This lock was considered unpickable for a very long time and It was considered impossible to manipulate open Until a man named James Clark Figured out a way to get into it and Went across the country back in the 1980s Stealing over half a million dollars in coins from pay phones And he evaded the police by basically By continuously moving Not really following any patterns. There were a couple little patterns that he followed He would mainly hit large sporting events Casinos places where a lot of people would be there and a lot of people would be using the phone and Apparently he would just go into the booth pretend to make a phone call and while he was sitting there on the phone He would manipulate the box open steal the coins lock it back up and leave And nobody knows how he actually got into these things He was on America's most wanted twice He was called in the newspapers everything from the pay phone bandit the telephone bandit the coin box bandit I've heard some people actually call him the phone ranger though. I've never seen that in print anywhere And I looked a lot honestly, all I found on the phone ranger was a Crappy old comic book character. It was pretty funny But anyway, he is pretty well known as the phone ranger among the community But No one's ever even though he was captured with his tools and Actually while he was working on one of these excuse me when I was sip a whiskey real quick No one ever actually was able to figure out how he did it Now the Bell Company Hired retired FBI agents and Spent a pretty good amount of money trying to figure out how he was able to get into these locks and To my knowledge, they never made any progress to that point So they spent quite a long time These locks are from the single-slot fortress pay phone And they were in service for I think around 50 years Altogether well 50 years ago from now. I think they were possibly Some of them are still used. They are still in places, but very rarely as we all know how rarely Payphones are actually used these days but They were continuously in service for I think about 20 30 years or so and Previous models to this went back quite a bit further than that But anyway, he was ultimately arrested in 1988 They said he was identifiable by a pony tail a baseball cap and I think cowboy boots and And he was caught in a pay phone playing with a lock Or in a phone booth pant playing with a lock But anyway, so I hadn't heard about that story And the first time I heard about this lock. Well, not the very first time but the first time I got interested in it was when Matt Smith also known as Huxley pig Did a video or he did a talk and I saw the recorded talk on video about a few really cool locks that he had been working on and this was one of them and He had actually made a little bit of progress on how to go about beginning to pick this He was still working on it and he said he had spent a lot of time and effort in trying to figure it out and That kind of made me start to think about this lock as in kind of a goal Just basically just thinking about how cool it would be if I could be the one that actually figured it out and So I went online. I searched a couple articles Matt blaze has an amazing article on these locks There's also a little bit of information on a couple of the lock picking forums But it wasn't until captain hook released a video on lock pickers United About a decoding method to get into this lock To be able to go in there figure out the key bidding and replicate a key to open this thing So with a set of wires similar to this With very precise measurements And little 90 degree turns on the ends he was able to go in there and Exploit the fact that returning the key to the zero position would also return all the levers to the zero position and There was a finite and an exact measurement between the keyway and the gates and the levers Since he was able to fit a piece of wire in there He was then able to determine where the gates were true and false and Was able to replicate and duplicate a key Make his own key and open the lock from there So when I saw that video it kind of kicked me in the butt and I Thought oh man if I'm gonna do this I better get started So that day I went on eBay found one of these and ordered it and It arrived a few days later. I Started messing with it figured out why everybody had such a hard time with it. This thing is an incredible pain But the first thing I did was Actually, I think Yeah, I think the first thing I did was create an acrylic faceplate for it So that I could see inside So basically I knew what I was dealing with So now this is the 30c here with an acrylic faceplate And you can see a couple differences from the 29a. This one actually does have a spring There's a single leaf spring here that puts tension on all the levers if you raise one lever up it lifts this spring and Basically Eliminates spring tension from the rest of the levers so they are free-floating This one does not have that stationary ward in the center But everything else is pretty much the same as the 29 Besides this mechanism right here and this is what makes this lock so tough This is the tumbler blocker And what this does is this This serrated piece here along with the points on the levers Makes it so that as soon as you put tension on this thing That blocker moves into place and Locks all the levers into place before the fence even gets to the levers So in picking a lock what we do is we put tension on the lock And after you put tension on it you manipulate the internals And you can feel say on a lever lock the fence rubbing on the levers So you'll know when you set a lever when it clicks into place Well on this one Before you can even put tension on it that blocker moves in and stops all those levers from being able to move You can see here that blockers already engaged But the fence is super far away from the gates Now that is for a couple different reasons they did that Obviously one being pick resistance and manipulation resistance, but also another being Lack of maintenance Some of these were in very remote areas Where the weather and the environment was not very friendly So if you got a lot of dirt and gunk and other things in this lock or if there was a lot of key where things like that As soon as you put the key in and it raises the levers up to an approximate height That blocker will lock them all into place and make sure that they're at the right height for that gate or the fence to move into the gates So that design was both for manipulation resistance, but also for longevity of the lock And to allow it to work in some very harsh conditions So that's what makes it so tough to pick is that blocker there Now the very first time I picked this lock what I did Was I bypassed that blocker And there's a video of it online. It was the first video that I posted of this lock And I took a shim Like this actually this is the one inserted it in the top and You got to get it under the anti tamper switch, which I'll show you a little later And that can actually hold the blocker back So then I could go in there manipulate the levers And see what it felt like to actually pick this thing So once I did that I posted a video online to basically show my progress show that I had actually picked the lock Which at the time it was a world's first Nobody had picked one of these on camera before even Even using a shim to bypass the blocker So it was a first, but it wasn't It wasn't the first that I was looking for Um But after posting that video I I got quite a bit of response from people Um captain hook being one of them And I talked to him a bit about this lock And got some tips. We exchanged a couple Little here and there is about the lock Um and got the talking captain hook is an amazing person Um great picker one of the best in the world And uh I didn't want to give too much away But I mentioned that I had been working on a method of picking it that was entirely through the keyway Which is what we're looking for So the first thing I did Was I took his idea Of using bent wires to find the gates And I thought well what if instead of identifying the gates one at a time What if I took a wire And bent it in a way That I could insert it in the lock in the keyway And put pressure on all those levers at once I could then pick them one at a time And get the the wire to go into all the true gates Which would set the levers all to the correct height And I could then turn the bolt and open the uh open the lock Now this kind of worked I was actually able to Get all the levers set onto the wire But when it came time to actually throw the bolt and open the lock That's where I ran into some issues Um It's kind of a a chunky wire and there's not a lot of room to work in there So It got in the way unfortunately. So when I went to throw the uh the bolt The Fence got stuck on the wire and would not move enough to actually open the lock unfortunately And I spent a lot of time trying to perfect this wire method. Um That's all the scratches you see inside here was me working on the on the wire trying to get it in there perfectly And get everything to work and I experimented with a lot of different ways I tried to get all the levers set right then put the bolt in a little bit and then remove the wire and continue But nothing was working um I mean it was a good idea But It ultimately failed Unfortunately So Um Well, here's another one that I had made. This was a much flatter wire That um, I thought might work. It's a much weaker much flatter wire I figured if I could do that maybe I could just force the bolt through the wire Bend it out of the way, but at least the lock would be open. But that didn't work either So I started thinking about um Matt uh Huxley pigs video again And he had come up with an idea Where he would over lift one of the levers Up to the point where it would hold the blocker back from the top So I don't know if I can get this in here to show you how this would work, but let's see So if you lift Oh, wait a minute. I gotta turn the uh Keyway Get that out of the way So if you lift up on one of the levers And you lift it past where it's supposed to go. Whoops I don't think I can do this without actually turning the key But you can get it Over lifted to where it will actually get stuck up here And hold the blocker back and I think you're actually deforming the lever at that point It's really tough to get it up there but It was an interesting idea um And it made me think About instead of trying to align the the gates using a wire or anything like that Maybe I could use the levers to hold the blocker back But in a different way And one day I was driving I was I was driving at work and talking to captain hook and uh I had an idea And I had to wait all day. It was super hard to wait to not leave work early or run home and try it But um I had an idea on what I could possibly do So what I thought was if I could hold one of the levers up So that the point of the lever Would set at the point of one of these serrations It might hold that blocker back just enough To where I could pick the wires or the levers past the blocker Now I'd still have to deal with the blocker. They'd still be clicking in these little serrations, but it might be just enough To where it wouldn't be fully engaged and I could actually pick the lock So I started work when I got as soon as I got home. I started working on creating something that would make this happen and ultimately I created this Just this little flag tool here It's got some warding cut into it there And what this does Uh, where's that tension wrench? Here it is. All right, so what this does Is you actually insert this Right into that first piece of warding All the way back and sit it into the actuator And when it's sitting there You then tension the lock and that little flag in the back I don't know if you can see that. Let's try to get some better light here So that rear lever Is sticking up just a little bit more than the rest of them. Can you see that bag there? Yeah, I think you can see that So that is actually holding that blocker back And what I was able to do at that point Was get a picking wire in there and actually started with the picking wire in there But it would hold the blocker just enough Then I was actually able to put tension on the lock And move the levers And that was actually the very first way that I ever picked this lock open And it worked It actually worked There's a couple videos of it online Um The first one got a lot of scrutiny, of course because it was a world's first Um There was a little piece of wire sitting on my desk that uh People thought was some sort of a shim to hold the blocker back or they had all sorts of crazy ideas, but As soon as that happened, I immediately did another video with a clean desk and made sure that there was no Possible way whatsoever that it was not real um But that was the very first way that I picked this thing open and I was super happy if I couldn't believe it I was just out of this world ecstatic. It was incredible. It's so great um but In thinking about it It wasn't the easiest thing in the world. It's a very delicate balancing act And I wanted to to make it Even better So with this This was designed To hold the blocker Just below that last uh lever's true gate So that eighth lever would be the last one that I picked And when I picked it it would be the last one and I only had to go one click to get it into its true gate And I think I'm pretty sure That this one tool probably would have worked for any other lock Unless that eighth lever was a zero cut if it was lower Anything higher you could have shot it up into place Uh, it wouldn't have been easy, but it would have been doable But um If it was a zero cut it would already be sitting too high And you'd have to hope that you could get it to drop down Sorry, I went in my whistle again so then I had the idea of What if I can hold all the levers up To the right height What if I can make all the levers Hold that blocker back So it didn't matter which one I picked when what the binding order was and So I started making tension wrenches Um, I designed a bunch of different tensioners that would go in and hold the the levers up to different heights and um There was all uh slight problems with it You know, I was hard to get a wire in there and keep holding everything and it was still a very delicate balancing act Don't get me wrong But ultimately what I figured out was that A thin wiper insert Was exact exactly the right height to go in there in that first ward And hold those levers up to the exact point where they need to be to hold that blocker back And you can actually pick the lock like this too Now again, it's difficult Because there's not a whole lot of room to work But it does hold all the levers up to where you need them And you can go in and pick it's it's possible But again, that wasn't good enough It wasn't easy enough so I started um I basically just started kind of playing with the lock and looking at what happened when I did different things So I started looking at what would happen if I just tensioned it, right? So you just tension it and I finally noticed if you look here When you tension this thing The blocker is not engaged It's sitting point to point with one of these levers But also that bolt isn't engaged either The bottom of the fence here is actually hitting the bottom of the levers So this lock starts in a very interesting Configuration here. I mean you think that the blocker would engage hold all the levers at zero This would have no room to go in things like that. But for some reason it's not and All those levers are held right there But this guy is hitting on the bottom so If you were to put a picking wire in here You can actually start picking this lock But unfortunately nothing's moving because that that fence is stuck at the bottom there so I started taking measurements and I realized eventually That if I took The lowest possible or the smallest possible wiper insert And inserted it here in between the wards there That plus the picking wire Was about just the right height to hold those levers at that same zero spot where the tensioner was where the tensioner was holding in before so What I figured out at this point Was that I can actually tension the lock Then insert a picking wire And if I just hit the couple levers That are holding The fence back I get to that spot where I want to be now granted It is a balancing act and that blocker will lock in a lot So it takes a lot of resets And if you're ever trying to pick this thing do not be afraid to start over because you have to start over a lot But eventually you'll start to learn which levers to pick first And once you realize that You can actually go about picking this thing So if you see that The levers are sitting at the very bottom of the blocker there holding it back just enough So let's go in and find the lever that the fence is stuck on Get it out of the way so the fence will then engage But the blocker's still being held back We're then going to find Little levers and you actually want to try to pick the very tallest levers first To get them out of your way Whoops lever wrong. So if you ever hit a wrong lever, you'll have to restart And that's okay. Like I said, it's gonna happen a lot. You just feel around in there for a binder Here we go find the binder Blocker engaged again So I'm probably not going to be able to do this live on video or not quite live But on this video here without some practice, I haven't picked one of these in quite a while Oops, let me drop the actuator there So happens when your lock's not fully put together. All right, now I'm determined There we go All right, so there it was I hope that was easy enough for everyone to see But yeah, so it is possible um That was a full pick granted with a clear face. So it's not that impressive um Of the western electric 30c So hopefully we'll get some more people out there picking these things and um Yeah, I uh, I hope everybody enjoyed that greatly So at the end of this, um, I'm actually gonna attach the video Where I pick this lock Without the cover taken off fully factory sealed with that same method um So you can see what it looks like with uh without an acrylic cover on it but Anyway, yeah, there we are. Um, if anyone has any questions or anything just I've been here the whole time, so I'm sure you'll have asked them, but uh, feel free to get a hold of me um I'm on discord the lock pickers united discord is nothing. Um, I have a youtube channel, which is a nothing symbol Uh, if you search western electric 30c, you can find me um And I'm here if anyone wants my email address It's mrmr.nothingpicks at gmail.com Reach out to me if you have any questions. If you're stuck, uh, I will Gladly help anyone through this So, all right. There we are. Thanks a lot all Hope you all enjoyed defcon and um, stay safe out there. Take care. Bye. Hey everyone. I hope you all are doing well um So I have another western electric 30c here Um, this one has not been taken apart yet. Um, all the rivets are still intact It is just like I received it Um, I do have a key for it It's got some pretty extreme bidding. Um It's got a zero cut right there in the two position Five cut back there That number four is a one cut. It's Annoying trying to set those levers without over setting anything else or bumping anything else, whatever but It works sometimes I think one of those that zero cut lever jumps up if I move the key too fast And you can see the blocker if you look in that corner moving in and out So that's still there Let me see if I can open here. All right, so I kind of developed a new technique That doesn't involve that third tool. I'm just a picking wire and tensioner kind of doing a lot of trial and error on these things and research and whatnot hoping to Get something pretty comprehensive put together at some point. You are going to see me reset a lot because If I do anything wrong, I have to completely start over Yes Hell yeah All right, there it is Oh man Yes Oh, I'm so happy Okay Oh, I'm so excited right now All right, so, um Yeah, since it's not taken apart I can't really Gutt it for you, but I guess I can at least kind of give you a 360 again Let me drop this out of the way first So there it is picked open. Oh, I'm so happy Let's see if we can get this image of the blocker coming back out. There it is. All right, all Western Electric 30c Picked all right. Have a great one. Take care. Oh