In the last couple of decades identity-theft has taken a lot of forms,here's something which is even more scarier. Think your keys are always safe?Think again.Computer programmers at UC San Diego have built a software called 'Sneaky' which can create an exact replica of a key from its image.

What is even more scaring is that the image need not be a good one,it can use an image of a key from almost any angle to create an exact replica.Cellphone pictures work and, in a chilling example, the team successfully reproduced a key using a shot taken with a telephoto lens from 200 feet away.


"You only need to click a few control points in the image of the key and the 'Sneakey' program does the rest," programmer Benjamin Laxton told a UCSD reporter, "It normalizes the key's size and position so that each pixel then corresponds to a known distance. From this information the height of each of the key cuts can easily be computed and likewise the bitting code can be extracted."

While the UCSD researchers have not released the Sneakey code to the public, they believe that anyone with a basic knowledge of MATLAB and computer vision techniques could build a comparable system.

What can you do to guard against it? Not much, save treat your keys like you do your credit card. Don't publicize its image, because that's all "Sneaky" and software like it would need.

I believe that Sneakey could be very useful for government and defense purposes, but it could be disastrous in the wrong hands. If you have pictures of your keys up on Flickr for any reason, now might be a good time to take them down.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!