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Duplicating Your Housekeys, From a Distance
Roland Piquepaille writes "Some clever computer scientists at UC San Diego (UCSD) have developed a software that can perform key duplication with just a picture of the key — taken from up to 200 feet. One of the researchers said 'we built our key duplication software system to show people that their keys are not inherently secret.' He added that on sites like Flickr, you can find many photos of people's keys that can be used to easily make duplicates. Apparently, some people are blurring 'numbers on their credit cards and driver's licenses before putting those photos on-line,' but not their keys. This software project is quite interesting, but don't be too afraid. I don't think that many of you put a photo of their keys online — with their addresses." I wonder when I'll be able to order more ordinary duplicate keys by emailing in a couple of photos.
I locked my Cadillac once and left my keys lying on the drivers seat. The locksmith successfully cut a new door key by hand just by looking at the key through the window.
There was a meme a while back, where people would post a photo of everything in their pockets (or handbag).
That's nothing! On the Discovery Health channel there was a story about a man that swallowed his friend's car key. They were too drunk to drive home and he wanted to prevent his friend from driving while drunk. To make a long story short, the spare key was lost and they they were able to make duplicate keys from an X-Ray that clearly showed the key.
There's a story from 2005 about a locksmith who made a copy of a key from an x-ray of some poor guy who somehow swallowed his key:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/06/25/locksmith-makes-key-.html
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Not quite. Depending on the key, of course, all you need to do is get the code and figure out the style. Then you could get replacements sent to you from the manufacturer.
In fact, some keys (I'm talking to you, cheap schlage locks) print the key code ON THE KEY, so you wouldn't even need to do any kind of fitting if the photo happened to be of the right side.
But, of course, why bother having a particularly secure lock, when your all-metal steel-bolted door is right next to a 6 foot plate-glass bay window?
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I think your efforts are in vain. You are way more likely to have some thug just break the door down or smash a window. Usually the people that break into your house do not have the foresight to plan to this degree.
I think that a more valuable use of resources would be to recyle the tinfoil sitting on your head.
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Variations on that method would work on most frame houses built during the last fifty years but burglars still attack doors and windows. This, of course, is because most are remarkably stupid (intelligent criminals go into politics).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Chubb (the venerable English lock maker) actually has a prison lock where part of its construction is to make it resistant to eyeballing by inmates, so they can't memorize the cuts on it and create a copy with sheet metal or another source.
Other than that, a few keys that are eyeball resistant that come to mind are the Shlage Primus, and the Medeco3 key, because someone would have to eyeball the slider, the pin depth cuts, and the angles of the cuts for the pins to rotate.
It's a lot easier to steal shit if no one has any idea you were there in the first place.
Neighbor: "db32's on vacation... what are you doing here?"
Thief: "Oh, he gave me a key to watch the house, see?"
Neighbor: "Oh, alright then."
Thief proceeds to park in the garage, load up car with everything, and leave, with days (or weeks) of lead time to unload stolen goods.
It's not a bad idea to keep your keys from being photographed. People will use a much more difficult way of breaking in if it gives them a better chance of not getting caught.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I've seen it done. Thieves backed a truck up to one of the homes in my neighborhood, opened the garage door, wheeled out the appliances and left.
I saw it happen as did several other neighbors, but it was one of the showhomes the builder was trying to sell and we figured that they buyer probably wanted a different appliance option and they were just going to switch them out. In retrospect they probably went into the home when it was showing on the weekend and left a window unlatched.
They did it on a weekday afternoon, broad daylight and wearing somewhat matching uniforms and they just blended in.