Key security in question

It’s not about how many people might think about digital keys used in cryptography, but about the most common mechanical keys. Many are accustomed to assume that as long as you don’t lose your keys, what’s behind the door they open is safe. It is true, because to make a duplicate, you need to have the key itself. Researchers at the University of California at San Diego have shown that things are not so simple now.

In this article, the authors describe a program that can make a duplicate key by its snapshot. For example, you can quietly take a picture of the keys at a distance and everything, a duplicate in your pocket! In the picture - the keys, photographed from a distance of 60 meters. This snapshot was successfully used by researchers to create a working duplicate key.


')

The recognition program is written in MatLab. In fact, to make a duplicate, it is necessary to measure the depth of each of the clumps of the key, which in itself is not so difficult. As the researchers note, the most difficult task was the recognition of keys from different angles. But such a problem of spatial orientation is quite solvable by methods of computer vision technology.

The researchers did not publish the program code, but admit that repeating what was done is quite realistic for a person who is knowledgeable in the relevant technologies. So hide your keys away from prying eyes and do not post photos with your keys in open access!