Hawaiʻi's Technology Community

Key Duplication by Photograph?

Just saw a link to an interesting story on researchers at UC San Diego developing an impressive proof-of-concept where they duplicate a physical key with just only a photograph. (Saw this on Bruce Schneier's blog)

This brings to mind an excellent bit of writing by Matt Blaze on Master-Keyed Lock Vulnerabilities.

And I was so worried when I thought I inadvertently left my house keys at a nearby onsen. The key fob actually has got our home address on it, I will have to remove that immediately!

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Permalink Reply by Jerry on November 4, 2008 at 9:21am

If they had your address and A key they could probably crack your lock. A few years ago at DefCon they had a display showing people that if you hit a key in a lock hard enough it will open. YouTube still has video of an 11-year-old girl opening a lock after only a few hits. Kinda scary that they haven't fixed this for the most part already.

They key-from-photo concept is pretty spiffy though. If not a little worrisome to the more paranoid of us out there. ;)

Permalink Reply by Brooke Fujita on November 5, 2008 at 3:52am

Hey, kewl link to that YouTube vid on that 11-year old lock breaker... Have you heard about the Bic ballpen opening up a Kryptonite lock?

Jerry said:

If they had your address and A key they could probably crack your lock. A few years ago at DefCon they had a display showing people that if you hit a key in a lock hard enough it will open. YouTube still has video of an 11-year-old girl opening a lock after only a few hits. Kinda scary that they haven't fixed this for the most part already.

They key-from-photo concept is pretty spiffy though. If not a little worrisome to the more paranoid of us out there. ;)

Key Duplication by Photograph?

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