Title: Book review: Locksport - A Hacker’s Guide to Lockpicking, Impressioning, and Safe Cracking Date: 2023-10-20 18:00 [![Locksport's cover]({static}/images/locksport.png)](https://nostarch.com/locksport) I'm starting to feel guilty about getting ebooks for free from [No Starch Press](https://nostarch.com/about), but apparently they're happy to send them my way in exchange for a review, so I won't complain. Anyway, I got a copy of the early access version [Locksport - A Hacker’s Guide to Lockpicking, Impressioning, and Safe Cracking](https://nostarch.com/locksport)! It's obviously a book about lockpicking, but, as *hinted* by its name, from the [sport](https://www.lockwiki.com/index.php/Locks port) angle. I'm not completely clueless when it comes to picking locks, but I've always been mediocre at best, since I never really put the effort into practising anything but the basics. This was thus a great opportunity for a deeper dive! So I got myself a [proper set of picks](https://covertinstruments.com/collections/lockpicks/products/genesis-lock-pick), 3 cutaway training locks [one with serrated pins](https://www.sparrowslockpicks.com/products/cut-away-lock-serrated-pins), [with spool pins]( https://www.sparrowslockpicks.com/products/cut-away-lock-spool-pins), and [one with stupid chess pieces pins]( https://www.sparrowslockpicks.com/products/cut-away-lock-check-pins), and a couple of locks/padlocks from my local locksmith, and dove into the book! I was a bit curious about its content, since I didn't bother reading the table of contents, and was expecting a pile of techniques to open [wafer tumbler locks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_tumbler_lock) in the fastest way possible. But the book is so much more than that, with historical perspectives, a bit of legalese, the proper etiquette to participate in lockpicking competitions and how to organise one, anecdotes, mechanical details and resources for those who [would like to know more](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_(film)), how to tear apart, modify, take care of, and reassemble locks, where to get equipment, how to [impression keys](https://www.lockwiki.com/index.php/Impressioning), details on [lever tumbler locks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever_tumbler_lock) and [vaults](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe), … The part about wafer locks, while interesting, doesn't really go much further than some basic techniques for entry-level [security pins](https://lockwiki.com/index.php/Security_pin#Security_pin_illustrations), but I guess practise is the only way to learn how to handle anything non-trivial anyway. On the other hand, the part about lever locks was highly entertaining, since those are really weird compared to the *usual* locks, and I didn't know much about them. I recently gifted myself a [Sparrow's challenge vault](https://www.sparrowslockpicks.com/products/challenge-vault) for my birthday, and was thus highly delighted to discover that the book has a whole section on [safe manipulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-cracking); which is fortunate since the instructions coming with the vault are pure garbage confusing at best. The only issue I had with the book is that while it's full of gorgeous colourful pictures, like the small marks left by pins during key impressioning, they are unfortunately barely legible on my [Pocketbook InkPad 3](https://www.pocketbook-int.com/ge/products/pocketbook-inkpad-3), so I'd recommend getting the paperback version if you don't have a π–™π–—π–šπ–Šπ–ˆπ–”π–‘π–”π–— 4𝖐 𝕳𝕯𝕽 e-reader. All in all, it's a really great self-contained book for newcomers and beginners, entertaining, detailed, … and doing a tremendous job at making lockpicking competitions look cool yet accessible! It was also a nice motivation booster for me to tackle harder locks. If you already know your way around locks, you might want to look at [High-Security Mechanical Locks: An Encyclopedic Reference](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/high-security-mechanical-locks-graham-pulford/1111341233) instead.