electronic method of making keys

[racerboy59]

Sorry if i'm posting in the wrong place or whatever, feel free to move it.

My uncle told me today that if you lose your keys, locksmith have a computer device which scans the keyway and plug to make another key which can operate the lock. How true this is, I don't know, so that's why i'm asking people who may be in the trade for clarification.

Thank You.

[lunchb0x]

This is wrong, to make a key to a lock without knowing the cuts you either have to pull the lock apart to make a key or impression a key.

[racerboy59]

Thanks for that information. Now I think he was just trying to put me off lockpicking. And he goes don't tell anybody that you know this skill. People will blame you when their house gets robbed or whatever. Most of my family don't see my point of view in doing things for enjoyment. Any time I find something I like, all they see are the negatives.

[datagram]

Your uncle is partially right. Scanning the keyway or key of a lock can be used to make a key that fits the lock, but, as lunchb0x said, you would still need to know the bitting codes to make the lock work.

This is pretty rare, though. Most locksmiths have blank keys that they order to fit locks, they just add the bitting cuts.

dg

[jimb]

This is wrong, to make a key to a lock without knowing the cuts you either have to pull the lock apart to make a key or impression a key.

Or read the wafers, visually or with a tool such as the Eez Reader. Or pull a code from the lock if available and look up cuts. I do remember seeing a website a year or so ago that was selling a Eez Reader type of tool that would read the lock electronically. It may not have worked or taken off as I've never read about it anywhere since.

[lunchb0x]

This is wrong, to make a key to a lock without knowing the cuts you either have to pull the lock apart to make a key or impression a key.

Or read the wafers, visually or with a tool such as the Eez Reader. Or pull a code from the lock if available and look up cuts. I do remember seeing a website a year or so ago that was selling a Eez Reader type of tool that would read the lock electronically. It may not have worked or taken off as I've never read about it anywhere since.

Sorry your right, I wasn't thinking about automotive locks so there are tools like the Eez Readers or the 13songs/ Lishi decoders so you won't have to disasemble a lock to work out the cuts.

[racerboy59]

Just to clarify, I was talking about front door locks. But thanks again for the info. You can never have enough.

[jimb]

Just to clarify, I was talking about front door locks. But thanks again for the info. You can never have enough.

In that case forget what I said because lunchb0x is spot on.

[raimundo]

I think your right, that guy just wanted to be and obstacle. There are a lot of people like that. whenever mankind comes to a fork in the road between progress and regress, there are 10,000 of them guarding the pass. repuglicans I call them.

[mh]

Locksmiths usually don't have that type of device.

It's not unheard of, though, cf. e.g. "Spycraft" by Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, p.212.

Cheers,
mh

[mcm757207]

I've seen a tool described in some locksmith publication or another which uses electronics to measure wafer locks to instantly(?) decode them and display the key bitting on an LCD screen, looked impressive (and pricey).

[Engineer]

Has anyone ever seen just HOW detailed the X-rays of packages can be through customs for example? Although I do not know of any such machine in existance today, I would have thought it would be possible to computer automate the process of X-raying the lock sideways on. The energy is slowly ramped up, alowing X-ray "slices" to be taken. A little image recognition software and some CAD software coupled to a computer milling machine and it should be possible even with todays technology already.

The problem would be cost and recovering the development money. As long as you can take the lock apart and re-key it, or impression it, why go to all that time, trouble and expense of developing such a machine? Only possibly military uses could justify it and even then, I doubt it would be very portable and certainly not covert, so if anyone is hiding something so secret, there will be guards, guarding whatever anyway. Hence that is why I think such a machine could be made, but no-one will be bothered to make one.

Racerboy59, my own feelings are that your Uncle may well be trying to put you off, but not because he's being mean, but because he's genuinely concerned - Please let me explain what I mean by that.

I'm a professional locksmith, but I've only ever told two friends that I pick locks and both times they had a very bad reaction to that. I guess they think locksmiths just sell padlocks or something, but both of them virtually accused me of being a thief then.

Perhaps it's all those films where the baddies always pick the locks before stealing something - I don't know, but your Uncle is right that if you tell people you pick locks, most will think it is because you steal and nothing you can say will seem to change that in my experience. Your mates will think it's cool and then try to pressure you into picking a lock "just for a joke" that you know is wrong and will cause you a lot of trouble eventually.

We on this group understand and you can talk to us, but you might find many in meatspace will try and put you off, because they only associate it with bad things.

[cryptocat]

Security/customs X-rays aren't very detailed. At least not the widely deployed ones - they seem to have about 1-2mm resolution, based on what I've seen going through airports. My backpack full of cables doesn't image very clearly, though that could be an artifact of the image processing software - an ipod doesn't look like a gun, so filter it out of the image. I hear lots of stories about people forgetting about the pocket knife in their bag and the scanners don't see it. I know the scanners have a hard time figuring out what my PSP and games are, and paperback books look like a block of explosive (rectangular prism, high cellulose content, fairly dense...) I think you'd have a hard time getting a good 3D model of an object with just a single source and detector plane like you'd have on an airport scanner. Needless to say, my bag gets hand-inspected a lot.

It looks like computerized tomography would be a better approach, of course it's not like you can wander into the emergency room and say "doctor, my lock/safe has a broken ankle - can you run it through the CT scanner?" CT is automated x-raying coupled to some image processing, but it also images from multiple perspectives and uses signal processing techniques to construct a 3D model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computed_tomography

Apparently there are high resolution CT scanners that operate down to micron-level details. http://www.ctlab.geo.utexas.edu/xradia/index.php

While this seems like unobtainable magic, it's not. CT scanners are not exactly commodity hardware, but there is a pretty established market. If you've got the cash, someone will sell you one. Also, modern mail-room x-ray scanners run on normal wall power. If you're something of a rich hacker you could probably transform that into a CT scanner - put a lock inside a lathe-like fixture inside the mail scanner, and take a couple hundred scans half or a quarter degree apart. Or maybe a side-view would be good enough.

[Squelchtone]

Locksmiths usually don't have that type of device.

It's not unheard of, though, cf. e.g. "Spycraft" by Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, p.212.

Cheers,
mh

*runs to the stack of books on the coffee table...*

hmmm, I remember this now.. it's interesting to know that in the 1960's their equipment had enough resolution to either poll each pin stack one at a time, or if it polled all the pin stacks at once, it probably display a combined reflection on the scope showing all the peaks and valleys, not unlike side scan sonar. Then they had a chart which converted peak values to semi accurate bitting values, and with enough testing, they probably could get very accurate bitting values in the lab, so the guys in the field wouldn't have to jiggle the key up and down at all, it would just open the lock first time a key was inserted.


great book mh, everyone on lp101 should have that on their shelf,

Squelchtone

[Legion303]

It looks like computerized tomography would be a better approach,

Marc Tobias has a video in LSS+ showing a CT scan of a safe lock. It's beautiful. As the scan progresses through the lock you can see with absolute clarity exactly where the gates are on each wheel.

-steve