KeyMe – Copy keys and solve lockouts

by Duhck • 12 years ago

73 102 12 years ago

edwhitesell2• 12 years ago

Sounds like a pretty novel idea. Until you lose your phone, your key.me account is hacked or any of a number of other things cause your data to get into the wrong hands.

I'm not saying a physical key is perfect or doesn't have most of the same issues (lost, theft, etc.), but why create a larger attack surface through a medium you have potentially less control of?

recursive2• 12 years ago

why create a larger attack surface through a medium you have potentially less control of?

For convenience.

edwhitesell2• 12 years ago

For convenience.

Yes. The convenience of someone else who is targeting you.

andrewmunsell• 12 years ago

Assuming you don't have an address tied to your account, the risk can be mitigated somewhat. If you KeyMe account is hacked or phone is lost, it's similar to losing the physical key itself-- the thief doesn't really know what the key goes to.

But, if the KeyMe user database is hacked along with personal information (billing address), then it becomes an issue.

Also, if you lose your phone and have emergency contact information (or can lookup the address associated with the phone number), then the thief also knows where to go.

carlmcqueen• 12 years ago

Hopefully everyone has a locked phone, but if they have a stolen phone and have gotten past the lock it is not hard to figure out someones home address on their phone by looking around apps and looking at the contacts.

Jemaclus• 12 years ago

Seems safe.

negamax• 12 years ago

Have personally spent $70 for forgetting my keys inside. Not the worst money spent but an expensive lesson nonetheless.

sinak• 12 years ago

Similar service that was previously on HN: https://keysduplicated.com

They now have an API too, and are targetting commercial used.

gwendolynregina• 12 years ago

This will scale much more quickly and has a better use case if applied to a multi-person scenario indeed - where there is a need for one to grant someone else physical access. Considering how many physical locks there still are, despite the increasing usage of all the "smart locks" (biometric, mobile-connected etc.), this can really be useful to the masses.

hoopism2• 12 years ago

Convenience vs Use Rate is off. I make keys maybe once every 5 years... am I weird?

Lockouts are convenient for sure... but still the low occurrence rate makes proactive sign up a tough proposition.

monkeynotes• 12 years ago

This was my thought also. I get locked out maybe once a decade, I really don't see the point in installing an app for that 'problem'. Chances are, by the time I need this service I will have long forgotten about it and go down an alternative commonplace route.

hoopism2• 12 years ago

If I ammortize the time, frustration and cost over a decade it's only penny/seconds a day.

uptown• 12 years ago

They've been testing the market in 7-11's around NYC. They had a kiosk setup in my local 7-11, and had some salespeople promoting the service for a few months.

I have no idea how many people they signed up ... but the salespeople and the kiosk are now gone. Anybody, from the neighborhood, that signed up expecting to be able to go back to that kiosk to print a replacement key are out of luck.

shotgoal813• 12 years ago

I actually got locked out a week ago and went back to one of their kiosks. I didn't see any of the salespeople from before either, but I was able to access my key with my fingerprint and email. You can still get your key made if you've registered before.

Shank• 12 years ago

Created 9 minutes ago and this is the only comment? That's odd.

najhr999• 12 years ago

Couldn't a strange use this app to copy your key?

EvanAnderson• 12 years ago

I'm sure they could, but that makes attacks only slightly more difficult.

It's fairly trivial to look at common key blanks and visually identify the bitting (the "combination" of cut heights necessary to move the tumblers in the lock to the shear line). Sometimes the key has the bitting stamped right on it, numerically, too.

mikeash5• 12 years ago

A stranger could use your local hardware store to copy your key, and this has been possible for decades.

Farfromthehood• 12 years ago

I thought about making an app like this and open sourcing it for the hell of it. It wouldn't be too difficult to limit the scanning (read: image recognition) to just 5 notch Kwikset and Schlage (standard/ residential) keys and outputting the key's code to the user.

basseq• 12 years ago

Fascinating, but I don't think I've ever been locked out of my house. CARS, on the other hand, are another story. But in this day of laser-cut keys and computer chips, this app won't be very helpful.

I am more interested in the DUPLICATION service, considering the failure rate of keys I get from Home Depot, etc. (50% at best).

TrainedMonkey• 12 years ago

With all the high quality optics on the market, what is stopping you from taking a picture of a key that belongs to somebody else? I am also somewhat surprised there is no legislature that prevents locksmiths from duplicating keys without physical copy being present.

Otherwise this is pretty awesome idea, that unfortunately highlights that it is high time our locks got more secure.

jordanbmeyer2• 12 years ago

Both Keyme and Keysduplicated.com makes sure you have pictures of both the front and back of the key, so you can't just do a fly by picture of keys on a table. They also have your CC and mailing address, which is more traceable than just going to the hardware store.

jusben1369• 12 years ago

Maybe the future of TaskRabbit becomes like Amazon. That is, you still sell a fair few services (products) but where you really make money is as an umbrella for all of these one use services that are starting up. Just go to TaskRabbit to search for "pick up my dry cleaning. Send me a gluten free meal. Lost my key please replace" and they route and take a cut to these services.

mbillie13• 12 years ago

I think I'd rather go this direction: https://lockitron.com/ ... having my physical key info backed up in my phone sounds fine, but I think I'd rather avoid physical keys anyway, if possible. Despite the somewhat obvious fear of hacking/etc, I still think digital security is much more secure than your average lock. You can get a bump key for something like $1 online.

nobodyshere• 12 years ago

Except there are better examples already in production at around the same price.

XaspR8d• 12 years ago

Care to share?

mbillie13• 12 years ago

Just an example - I'm curious though, what other examples are there?

eksith2• 12 years ago

What if you lose your phone? Or what if, like these folks, you suddenly decide you don't want a smartphone anymore? http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-01-16/news/ct-flip-p...

If having a physical key image stored elsewhere is a concern, then a keyless combo lock is probably the simpler alternative. You just remember your key code (hopefully) and don't need to carry anything besides your memory.

mbillie13• 12 years ago

Losing your phone is an issue, yes - much like losing your keys with a conventional lock. Suddenly deciding I don't want a smartphone anymore would probably be a life event radical enough to justify replacing my smartphone-dependent lock, and is furiously unlikely to happen.

mikeash5• 12 years ago

If you lose your phone, then use your regular key to open the door.

If you lose both, well, there's only so much you can reasonably protect against.

whyme• 12 years ago

To me this is like posting my password on the wall so that I don't forget.

gvb• 12 years ago

And writing the GPS location of the lock in question on the note. :-O

In a couple of months I expect to see a HN story that is a google search of geotagged images of keys.

zbruhnke2• 12 years ago

annnnd the app crashes for me

keymeinc3• 12 years ago

Sorry about that. We'll buy you a beer if you email us the details: support@key.me

zbruhnke2• 12 years ago

email sent!

mikeryan• 12 years ago

Just don't forget your keys and your phone.

My wife and I are looking into coded door locks (infant at home and the wife is afraid of locking herself out and the baby in) and found there's a $219 dollar door lock you can open with your phone. May make more sense then this solution.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CPTD5AQ/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=178...

marincounty• 12 years ago

I learned long ago to hide keys in unusual spots. I do need to put together a cheap home alarm system though.

abimaelmartell• 12 years ago

Checkout this -> https://lockitron.com/

guptaneil• 12 years ago

I assume OP is looking for an existing product, not one that might ship when the moons of Jupiter align.

In all seriousness though, I've been waiting for my Lockitron for almost a year now, and others have been waiting for much longer. At this point, there's no way I can recommend Lockitron to anybody as anything more than a cool concept.

mikeash5• 12 years ago

Not something to get if you're in a hurry, though. I ordered mine last fall and it was initially supposed to arrive in a couple of months, but it's been bumped back repeatedly and now they're saying May delivery.

kenrikm• 12 years ago

Lockitron is almost vaporware at this point. Their site still only shows renderings and I've yet to meet someone who pre-ordered who actually got the product.

Ryoku• 12 years ago

So, if your home is out of energy you're locked out? I don't know how common that is in USA. But where I live, you'd be trapped under an hours-long storm while waiting for the power to come back during rain season.

spyder• 12 years ago

Looks like this product has lot of negative reviews.

seddona• 12 years ago

I did this as a fun project a while back http://dittokey.com/ .

I open sourced the app:

https://github.com/andrewseddon/dittokey-iphone

and computer vision:

https://github.com/andrewseddon/keyify

No production ready, complete hack, but it does work. The vision side is an interesting problem. This was a while back and i was dealing with older cameras. I should imagine with modern phone cameras it's a pretty simple problem.

emhart6• 12 years ago

Oh, man! I saw this a while back and was very excited about it. I have a project I've been working on off and on in my spare time that I'd love to talk to you about if you'd be up for a conversation.

kristopolous• 12 years ago

They still called it a "kiosk"? I think I respect them for not going down that pun road.

lawl2• 12 years ago

Slightly OT:

Is this type of key common in the US? A few years back I bought a lockpicking set, and locks like these are incredibly easy to open without much training.

In Switzerland we have KABA locks pretty much everywhere. I don't know but I think they're much harder to pick and I guess you can't reconstruct them out of a photo because you don't know the depth of the holes.

Also you need the key and lock the door from the outside with it, so you can't really lock yourself out. Doors that snap lock are incredibly rare here.

Photo: http://www.kaba.ch/media/466464/v6/resized535x-1/dunkelrot-f...

rit• 12 years ago

Yes, at the very least in Apartments in the US. Every apartment I've lived in (in several states/both coasts) has had the simple style keys. IANAL (i am not a locksmith), however.

Homeowners obviously have more choice in the locks they use, though.

grinich• 12 years ago

KABA is really uncommon for residential units in the US. But you probably could optically measure the key, since the dimple's diameter shows the depth.

It's always seemed like a safety hazard to me with interior-locking doors. When I stayed with a friend in Paris, I was locked inside their flat when they left early for work.

IvyMike• 12 years ago

They are. But I honestly don't care that much, because when my home was broken into, this is how they picked my lock: http://imgur.com/vN2LkNn

Here is an alternate solution: http://imgur.com/inJp7zB

Yes, picking a lock is much quieter but the reality is most break-ins emphasize the word "break".

svantana• 12 years ago

Obviously, lock safety tend to go hand in hand with other forms of safety. My experience is that houses and apartments in the US seem relatively easy to break into. Here in Stockholm (Sweden), I've never ever seen an apartment door that opens inwards (and most are steel enforced), and street-facing bottom floor windows have steel bars usually.

JCE504• 12 years ago

I worked as an apprentice locksmith from the middle of high school until I graduated college - we always told people, standard locks should be looked at only as a way to inconvenience a person from breaking in. If someone really wants to break into your house, they are going to; it's only a matter of how long it takes them to get in, and through what method. Granted, it was at this point they would ask about security systems, which we also installed - but the general principal still stands.

Timmmmbob• 12 years ago

Looks like the lock was still your problem even if it wasn't picked.

ToastyMallows• 12 years ago

Lived in the US my whole life. I've never even seen a key like the one you posted.

rahimiali3• 12 years ago

The US is an odd place for locks. Locks here pander mostly to convenience and cost, not security. So high security keys like those are rare here.

One reason is the way we build houses. It's easy to break into our houses through their windows or from their back door, so it makes little sense to secure their front doors with fancy locks. Instead, we rely on alarms, guard dogs, our neighbors, or guns. Compare our exposed apartments here to those in, say, Paris, which have barred windows, or to houses in the middle east, which are walled off from the street.

Here is some sales data from KeysDuplicated.com that you might find interesting (we're in the same business as keyme, though we mostly operate in the background, as a service provider to other businesses): about 45% of our US orders are standard Schlage keys, which are relatively easy to pick. About 25% of our US orders are Kwikset keys, which are absolutely trivial to pick. About 90% of the requests we receive from the Middle East are mind-bogglingly complex and would take hours to pick. Our French orders are somewhere in the middle.

Anyway, to answer a question that might have been lurking in your comment: those dimple keys aren't any more difficult to duplicate by photo than other keys. The image analysis is similar, and cutting them on our machines is straightforward. They're just hard to pick. And in case you were going to ask, we don't copy them at KeysDuplicated because that usually goes against the intent of the owner of the key.

ufmace2• 12 years ago

Yes, everywhere I've ever lived or visited in the US. And very few hardware stores stock anything but those basic types of locks. Even the somewhat more secure Medco locks are virtually never seen, and cost several times more to buy.

I would say they're right to use relatively simple locks too. I've known several people who have had their homes broken into through kicking down doors or breaking windows. I've never even heard of a break-in by picking a lock. Why make everybody's locks much more expensive and harder to duplicate when lockpicking attacks are virtually nonexistent in the real world?

qwerty_asdf5• 12 years ago

This would be awesome, except for the fact that my landlord installed a "Mul-T-Lock" with "DO NOT DUPLICATE" instructions on all tenant keys, to prevent over-occupied apartments, unauthorized sublets, and squatters.

http://www.mul-t-lock.com/

And, guess what I tried: grinding off the "DO NOT DUPLICATE" instructions with an angle grinder, and getting copies made anyway.

I walk into the hardware store, and ask the clerk for a copy. The guy glances at it, and gives me a funny look, and says:

  You got the card?

  Card? Uh... Ah, nah man, not on me.

Pause and a long look...

  Okay, $25 bucks. Pay in cash.

...long pause. I look at the key prices, and a Mul-T-Lock copy is priced at $5. The guy's obviously inflating the price of the copy as an implicit bribe to do something he's not supposed to do. Fuck it. Let's see where this goes.

5 minutes later and I have a copy that works perfectly.

Next week, the super changes the lock on the front door, distributes new keys to all tenants and tells us that the master was reported stolen.

bitJericho• 12 years ago

Take a picture, erase the message, print it, take a picture, use keyMe. Alternatively, find a hardware store where they aren't jerks.

toomuchtodo2• 12 years ago

What's the difficulty level of laser-cutting a key?

qwerty_asdf5• 12 years ago

Well, I'm not certain that the guy at hardware store was a total jerk. I'm not entirely clear on how the lock was determined to be compromised. Yeah, he took my money, but did the hardware clerk take a picture of the key, and report it? (I doubt it) Was the master actually stolen, as a matter of coincidence? Did the lock somehow indicate that an improper key was being used on it? I had both my original and the copy, and there weren't any serial numbers, and there don't seem to be any embedded chips in my keys...

bjterry• 12 years ago

In the future you will be able to just scan the key and then 3D print a precise replica from the safety of your home.

qwerty_asdf5• 12 years ago

Sure, "in the future", but right now, most common 3D printers seem to only operate with a precision of ~0.5 mm.

I've thought about trying to make a crude 3D printed copy now, with a current generation printer, and polishing the ABS with acetone, to produce a higher quality copy manually.

The resistance of the springs on my building's outer door lock give a pretty smooth, low-resistance action that plastic (or maybe even wood, but not hard wax or soap) might tolerate, but then I'm paying $3,000 for a copy...

emhart6• 12 years ago

The future is now: http://eclecti.cc/hardware/physical-keygen-now-for-disc-deta...

downandout• 12 years ago

Just a suggestion, but in the case of KeyMe, Photoshop would take care of the problem. Just smudge out the "DO NOT DUPLICATE" and keep that image handy on your phone.

mechanical_fish2• 12 years ago

Fortunately, burglaries are pretty rare. I presume it has since occurred to you that, if anything had gone missing from your building during the critical week, you'd have been down at the local police station in handcuffs, making a phone call to a lawyer?

I'd be astonished if that hardware store didn't have surveillance video of you.

Incidentally, the trick where you test someone's level of guilt by massively overcharging them, then seeing if they pay without a peep, is straight out of G.K. Chesterton's The Blue Cross:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/204/204-h/204-h.htm

I'm thrilled to learn that this hundred-year-old mystery-story trope also works in real life!

qwerty_asdf5• 12 years ago

Ha ha! Well, snagging an unauthorized copy still seemed smarter than some of the alternatives, like climbing fire escapes and jimmying my own window...

http://gothamist.com/2009/08/08/locked_out_of_apt_woman_fall...

It's more common than you think!

emhart6• 12 years ago

I'd imagine that he was actually charging you for the extra effort as much as doing something sketchy. While the card does provide an additional layer of security, it also provides a layer of convenience for the locksmith, as they can just punch your code into their machine and it will spit out a copy very rapidly.

It sounds like you were talking with someone who had a clue and could quickly, but with additional effort, reproduce a key via a duplicator like this: http://www.lockpicks.com/w333l-sidewinderkeyduplicator.aspx which is fine, but dramatically less convenient than an automated code cutter.

Groxx2• 12 years ago

Going to walmart works too. I've been to three or four, every time with 'do not duplicate' keys, and every time they simply haven't even looked. If you're concerned that they might, there are always key-head covers.

keymeinc3• 12 years ago

We'll be adding basic Mul-T-Lock keys soon.

mrbill• 12 years ago

I have a Kwikset pushbutton combo deadbolt. I can use either my key, a button combo, or my ZWave-enabled home security system via my phone to unlock the front door. Cost around $150 and took 10 minutes to install.

jordanbmeyer2• 12 years ago

If anyone is interested in playing around with it, Keys Duplicated has an API that you can use to make copies of keys from pictures:

https://keysduplicated.com/API

Its perfect for businesses that need access to the home, like cleaning and delivery services.

drdaeman• 12 years ago

...And don't forget to link with Foursquare account, so we'll know when you're on vacation overseas! Well, I'm obviously kidding, but I don't feel it's wise to share key material just like that.

Guess, an encrypted file that's kept near the lock (like QR code kept at friendly neighbor's place or in your own postbox) which is decrypted and shown to a locksmith only when necessity arises would be a better idea. Unless, well, you forget the passphrase (which has to be strong) to decrypt the key.

(Yep, they may kept data encrypted, and they probably do, but one has to trust on their word for that.)

mschuster912• 12 years ago

So, I pickpocket the key of $stupid_colleague at work. Then, I deliver it to KeyMe to copy it... and place the keys back e.g. at the coffee machine, so that $stupid_colleague finds them again (or I do a reverse pickpocket).

Later that night, or when I know the guy is on vacation, I empty his house.

Yay for thieves.

emhart6• 12 years ago

What part of that sequence of events were you unable to do before KeyMe or KeysDuplicated?

mschuster912• 12 years ago

The speed, the fact that I can supply the photos via an app so I basically need only a minute with the keys (e.g. when the colleague is on the toilet and leaves the keys on the desk), and the fact that there are no eyewitnesses.

A store clerk might be telling me to wait a bit for the key to duplicate, but in reality call the cops on me; there are cameras in hardware shops which can identify me and the bundle of keys and also there are other customers in the store.

Zimba• 12 years ago

You would only need to snap a picture of the key.

stephengillie• 12 years ago

Great idea. How soon do you plan on having Android support? http://imgur.com/NsXyL2Q

keymeinc3• 12 years ago

http://imgur.com/gallery/lirgYqz

ufmace2• 12 years ago

I have a much easier solution for solving lockouts - only use deadbolt-type locks. Once you go outside, you can only lock it with the key.

KeyMe – Copy keys and solve lockouts

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