A Typical Day for a Garage Sale!

[gunug]

I got up at 6am (awful early for a saturday) and dragged boxes of books and computers outside onto the patio.  Now at 10:05am I'm watching the rain drip onto the big plastic tarp I threw over everything.  I'll have to try harder to get rid of the G3 iMAC!  

Just after I threw the tarp over everything I came in a logged in and saw this "novel" use for credit cards:

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/m...o-locks-cr.html

[Gregg]

Um, if, in order to fashion the plastic "clone" out of a credit card or other stiff plastic, one needs the lock's matching key, just use it.

[gunug]

Gregg - You only need to take a picture of the key something that you might be able to do with a cellphone camera.  The article suggests layered security; I'm thinking big mean dogs!

[Gregg]

A picture!?? Then what, you guess at how big the key actually is and make the "copy" based on that estimate?

[krissel]

Actually a scan is needed to get the proper size.

QUOTE

The researchers say they were able to open Threat Level's lock with covert methods because they were able to determine the angles of the bitting from the scanned picture of the key. Had the picture been poorer quality, they still could have created a key to lift the pins, but they would have had to use a forced-entry technique to break the cylinder and open the lock.

But many thieves don't just 'use' keys they have in their possession because they would be immediately suspect. Instead they would try to make a duplicate that could be used when the original is not in their care. This gives a false sense of security to some in management who think that key is non-reproducible.

[Gregg]

Oh, a scanned photo. That makes sense. I don't use a scanner, didn't think of that.

And I don't have a criminal mind. (not that you do) I wasn't thinking about an "inside job".

I suppose a plastic key only has to work one time. Hopefully the thief will be unable to use it twice anyway.