A Computer Program that Can Duplicate Keys from Photographs

By John Farrier in Science & Tech on Nov 2, 2008 at 2:12 pm

Computer science students at UC San Diego have written a program that can duplicate keys from security camera photographs:

The team demonstrated the software at ACM’s Conference on Communications and Computer Security 2008, where students showed off the technique up close and from afar. They took close-up shots of keys with a cell phone camera. Then, using a 5-inch telephoto lens, they stood on top of a building and took photos of keys sitting on a table 200 feet away. In both examples, they were able to capture sufficient data to create duplicate keys.

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Johnny Cat
Nov 2nd, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Great.
JivesTheButler
Nov 2nd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Something tells me the days of the highly skilled lock pick with his fine metal tools and steady hand is gone. Behold the new era of breaking and entering.
Pudifoot
Nov 2nd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
This doesn’t seem like it would be too hard. I would think anyone that took a computer science course in computer graphics should be able to do this. I am surprised it took them this long
Michael N
Nov 2nd, 2008 at 8:38 pm
This could get scary. It’s becomming way to easy to be able to steal stuff now.

Just think about it. All a thief would have to do is take a photo of someones keys while they are not looking and they have instant access to that persons house or car…scary.
Josh
Nov 2nd, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Kind of pointless when a simple bump key can do the job in less than a second then having to go out take a picture, make the key then go though the door.
linty
Nov 5th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
As a locksmith I used to make keys from photocopies or pictures fairly often. The spacing between cuts is a given, and there are only a handful of different possible cut depths (between 3 and 6 for cars and between 7 and 9 for houses).
The fact of the matter is that if you are buying a cheap lock and expecting it to protect you adequately, you’re wrong.
renderanything
Nov 5th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
What with bump keys and this, looks like someone will have to develop a new, cheap security technology. As is, looks like I now have something new to be paranoid about.

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