The tools we make are the tools we use.
Covert Instruments designs and sells best-in-class lock picks, bypass tools, and training gear. We started the company in 2020 to put professional-grade entry tools in the hands of locksmiths, hobbyists, and security professionals, built to a higher standard than what was already on the market, and tested by the people who use them every day.
Who We Are
We're a small team of pickers, instructors, and engineers who got tired of recommending tools we wished were better. So we started making our own.
Almost every product in our catalog is designed in-house, prototyped on the bench, and field-tested by the team before it ever gets released. If it isn't a measurable improvement over what's already out there, it doesn't ship. That single rule is the reason most of our customers come back.
Year Founded
Social Media Followers Across Our Team's Channels
Lock Review & Bypass Videos Published
Products In Our Catalog
Meet Our Designers
Discover the talented minds behind Covert Instruments. From expert lockpickers to renowned security professionals, learn how their innovative designs and extensive experience shape the tools you trust.
The Lock Picking Lawyer
The Lock Picking Lawyer is one of the most well-known names in the world of lock picking and covert entry. He is best known for his extremely popular, eponymous YouTube channel, which features over 1,000 videos exposing weaknesses and defects found in locking devices so that consumers can make better security decisions.
What's less well-known is that he also works with lock manufacturers to improve their products, private companies to improve their security, tool-makers to improve their products, and government agencies. As his name suggests, the Lock Picking Lawyer was a business litigator for nearly 15 years before retiring from law to devote all of his time to security work.
Robert Pingor
Robert is a nationally known Special Operations and Intelligence Community Red Team Instructor with extensive training experience in both the government and private sectors. He has instructed for the Department of Defense, State Department, National Security Agency, CIA, FBI, the United States Air Force, the United States Military Academy at West Point, the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, the National Defense University, the Sig Sauer Academy, and countless local law enforcement agencies.
He also regularly conducts trainings for Black Hat, the SANS Institute, and other technical conferences. Outside of work, Robert adventures with his wife and volunteers his time at police academies training Police Cadets and K-9s.
Trevor McNally
Better known as @McNallyOfficial on social media, McNally designs much of our bypass and specialty tool lineup, including the Reaper Lock Pick Set. He has an obsessive eye for the locks people already own, the cheap padlock, the file cabinet, the hotel safe, and a knack for finding the one geometry the manufacturer didn't account for.
What's less known about McNally is his extensive experience using Rebound Rings on living things, long before he discovered they also work remarkably well on bump keys.
Tony Virelli
Tony designs tools and gear for Covert Instruments, drawing on a background in 3D printing and years spent in the locksport community. That time around locks shapes the tools he designs. They're practical, buildable, and made by someone who knows how locks actually behave. He'd rather build something than talk about it, and he iterates on a design until the tool does exactly what it should.
Beyond the design bench, Tony serves as the company's CIO, running the technology that keeps Covert Instruments operating behind the scenes. He has also served as a board member of The Open Organisation Of Lockpickers (TOOOL), the nonprofit dedicated to advancing public knowledge of locks and lock picking.
How A Tool Gets Made
Design
Every tool starts as a problem our team couldn't solve with anything already on the market.
Prototype
We cut early versions in-house and rotate them through the team. If it can't beat the closest off-the-shelf alternative on the bench, it goes back.
Field-test
Prototypes get carried into real work, engagements, training, locksmith calls, until we're confident in the design.
Manufacture
Some production happens in house and the rest with partners we've worked with for years. A handful of specialty tools come from makers we've vetted personally.
Trusted By Many
Shop The Tools We Use Every Day
Best-in-class lock picks, bypass tools, and training kits, designed, tested, and trusted by the team that makes them.