Dear Reader,
By now you’re likely thinking “Who is this Jon King character and why should I care?” Well, I can’t
help with the caring part but I can tell you a bit about myself and the events of the last few months.
I post on Lockpicking101.com and EZPicking.com as JK_the_CJer. This is widely known to be the
worst handle on the internet. The first part is a thinly-veiled reference to my name. The second
part does not stand for Car Jacker, but instead for Contact Juggler. Give that term a quick Google
and you’ll discover another hobby of mine (for a good seven years or more). Since the time that I
was in middle school (I’m 22 years old now), I remember wanting to try picking locks. I can recall
using a hammer to flatten bicycle spokes and grinding them on my back porch’s concrete steps. I
would then attempt to open my back door lock (Kwikset). Every once in a while I asked my
parents for a pick set, but this was declined. I couldn’t blame them really. Fast forward a few years
to me graduating high school and joining the Navy. I was stationed at a training command for a
supplemental electronics school when the curiosity bit me again. I remembered the “MIT Guide to
Lockpicking” and started reading. Later that day, I pulled some packing staples out of a discarded
case of paper towels and ground them on the concrete outside. I also found a vise in the barracks
maintenance closet which helped with bending the hook and tension wrench I had fashioned. After
buying a Master #140 padlock, I sat down and started trying to pick. It took four hours straight, but
finally…”Open!” I have been a lock picker ever since.

What is Medeco?
Medeco is a brand of high-security locking cylinders used throughout the world to secure very
important sites. They have many government contracts and are said to hold 70% of the high-security
market in the US. Their popularity came about almost immediately after their invention and
production in the early 70’s. People saw how revolutionary their design was and pounced on it.
They have remained a standard for high-security lock design ever since. I saw Medeco as the holy
grail of lockpicking and I believe many others still do. I had it in my head “Maybe one day, I’ll pick
one once”. I even included “Pick a Medeco m3” in my list of long-term goals (along with “Earn a
Masters degree in EE”) on my Navy paperwork. They have a frightening reputation in the hobby
lockpicking world as being one of the hardest locks to open. I read reports of folks saying they had
finally opened one and felt their excitement through my laptop’s screen. Later, Locknewbie21
developed an ingenious rake-like tool with which he was able to open them on a consistent basis. I
remember being so skeptical of just how consistent it was. My doubts were formed from my
prejudice against raking and the reputation that Medeco has of being almost impossible to pick.
LN21’s tool stands out in my mind because it was so much more successful than any of the tools the
community had developed up until that point.

The Tool
Eventually I ended up picking my 4-pin + sidebar Medeco Classic Payphone lock. I utilized a
combination of single-pin picking and raking. The first time that one of these locks popped open
reminded me of that #140 I had picked two years earlier. After only opening it again once or twice
like that, I started thinking. I found two simple design elements which held some potential of
being leveraged. The first was a method of actually rotating the pins. This is the part that everyone
has been racking their brain on over the years. I solved this problem for pretty much every Biaxial,
m3, and some Classics. The solution was very simple, but required quite a bit of manual dexterity.
Also, the process of rotating the pins was very much like picking a six pin lock with all spool pins
by itself. However, it was a vast improvement over my previous technique. On a whim, I made a
tool that exploited the second attack vector I had found and combined it with the first. Prior to the
implementation, I considered attack #2 to be sort of far-fetched and hard to engineer around. Boy
was I wrong, this thing worked! In my opinion, it effectively turns the Medeco locks that it works
on (most of them) into 6-pin Schlage locks. Picking the pins to shear becomes the hard part.

Who is Medeco?
After much rejoicing and discussion on both IRC and the advanced forums of Lockpicking101.com, I
made the tool look pretty and sold a handful to trusted members. I haven’t received much feedback,
but I know that at least a couple of them are able to open the locks using it. I am hoping that the
others are getting the hang of using it as well. A short time after this, I expressed a desire to release
the tool publicly. At the time, NDE magazine was getting started on Issue #2 after a long hiatus. I
had released my 3d lockpicking game with them in Issue #1 and decided this publication would be
a great way to release. After speaking to a few of the staff folks (especially Schuyler Towne), we
decided it would be fun to get Medeco’s reaction to the tool. After some social networking, I found
myself on the phone with Peter Field (Director of Research at Medeco). He made a very surprising
proposal that I was not expecting at all. Peter offered to drive from Medeco HQ (also in Virginia)
to my apartment to view the tool and talk about it. We postponed the release in anticipation of
this meeting and agreed that Schuyler should be present as well. About a month later, all three of
us were sitting in my dining/living room on a Sunday morning. After showing the basic theory of
operation, I proceeded to try picking one of my cylinders. I had some initial difficulty related to
the shear line picking part and I was nervous. Then the lock opened followed by several others. I
picked a Medeco Classic, Biaxial, and m3 in front of a Medeco representative. For the next six hours
or so we talked about everything under the sun from destructive entry to disclosure politics.

The Response
Going into the meeting I fully expected Medeco to arrive with a suitcase of cash, a lawsuit, or both.
Instead, Peter told us that the company is going to fix the vulnerability in the locks! He merely
asked for two months to make the changes to every Medeco cylinder coming off the assembly line.
This period will also be used to inform the existing customer base (via Medeco dealers). We are sitting
in this two month window right now. Once we have received confirmation that the changes
have been fully implemented, the tool itself will be publicly released via this magazine. They are
currently closing a vulnerability that has been in the most popular high-security lock in the US for
the last 25 years or so. The company is also giving credit for the fix not only to myself, but also to
the locksport community as a whole. We made a difference!

Jon King
Inventor, Sailor, Lockpicker