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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Keys Can be Copied From Afar, Jacobs School (UCSD) Computer Scientists Show |
| 2008-10-31 |
| San Diego, CA, October 30, 2008--UC San Diego computer scientists have built a software program that can perform key duplication without having the key. Instead, the computer scientists only need a photograph of the key. "We built our key duplication software system to show people that their keys are not inherently secret," said Stefan Savage, the computer science professor from UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering who led the student-run project. "Perhaps this was once a reasonable assumption, but advances in digital imaging and optics have made it easy to duplicate someone's keys from a distance without them even noticing." Professor Savage presents this work on October 30 at ACM's Conference on Communications and Computer Security (CCS) 2008, one of the premier academic computer security conferences. |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #6 Mitch, ask Joe the Plumber, Tito the Builder etc. next time he takes his keys out to unlock a door. A decent camera is all it would take nevermind digital video survailance. Why is this interesting? Well, you see somebody with a pick set or one of those key guns and it looks suspicious. See somebody walk up, whip out a key and use it without hesitation and nobody thinks anything about it. Heck, one could take the picture, upload it into a special made key grinder and a couple minutes later cha ching - even set it up in the back of a van. My guess is that this is not the first time somebody figured out how to build this program, just the first public announcement of it. .5MT, thats good stuff. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2008-10-31 17:31 |
| #5 "Who are you? How did you get in here?" "I'm a locksmith, and... I'm a locksmith." |
| Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats 2008-10-31 17:21 |
| #4 Yeah, but that requires the crook to have compromised the security on an ATM machine. Look, this is all getting very Enemy of the State. Wouldn't it just be easier to just pick your lock? Lockpicks sets, as cheap as $17, here. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2008-10-31 16:17 |
| #3 No problem, just inscribe DO NOT PHOTOGRAPH on the key. |
| Posted by: .5MT 2008-10-31 13:37 |
| #2 ATMs often take photos. People often hold their keys in their hands or leave them on the ledge while withdrawing money. Some ATMs are hacked. |
| Posted by: lotp 2008-10-31 13:14 |
| #1 Oh, hell. I thought they had accomplished something serious, some sort of major theoretical breakthrough in cryptography that I would have thought to be impossible. *Physical* keys. Feh. Who the hell takes pictures with their key rings prominently displayed? |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2008-10-31 08:17 |