allgeektout

It’s time to start making tiny tin foil hats for your keys – it seems that even they aren’t safe anymore. Scientists at University of California San Diego have created a software package to duplicate keys using grainy pictures such as those taken from a cell phone, or even a picture taken from up to 200 feet away. Benjamin Laxton, the first author of the paper, explained the process.

The program is simple. You have to click on the photo to tell it where the top of the key is, and a few other control points. From here, it normalizes the key’s size and position. Since each pixel then corresponds to a set distance, it can accurately guess the height of each of the key cuts.

Thankfully, they aren’t releasing the program (or at least they haven’t yet), but that doesn’t mean everyone should breathe a sigh of relief; the researchers say that it shouldn’t be difficult for someone else to replicate the process.

Is anything safe anymore?

Via Gizmodo