Comment by qwerty_asdf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qwerty_asdf | Hacker News Reader

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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...

fwiw Shapeways claims 0.125mm on brass: http://www.shapeways.com/materials/brass

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

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.

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.

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

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

it turns our you need a fancy laser cutter to do this. melting brass reflects infrared everywhere, which can destroy everything within sight. one solution is to use a different frequency, which costs more. i run keysduplicated.com, and we long ago settled on CNC mills instead of laser cutters to make our keys. they're cheaper, slightly more reliable, and much faster.

Hey! Just a note to say I love what you've done at keysduplicated. When you first launched Shloosl I had dozens of people email and tweet me expecting that I would be horrified. Instead, I tried to explain that convenience has to live in concert with security. If you can provide people a solution that is nearly as convenient as keeping a key under the doormat, but far safer on an individual bases? I think that's a huge win.

Congrats on your success thus far, wishing you the best!

Sweet! Thanks for the kind note.

Thanks for the info, love the site!

FYI: Your footer is missing a link for getting updates: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lpipzrhrnigj1nb/Screenshot%202014-...

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...

Yes, the clerk almost certainly turned you in. The alert went out within a week. Do you really want to bet that was a coincidence?

He may not have turned you in, by name or by face, and he may not have turned you in specifically to your landlord, but he could have. And the coincidence suggests that the word went out and that your landlord took action in response.

As for the "master" key thing: Master keys can often be made by filing off a tiny bit of a non-master key. That's how they work. So, when you requested a copy of your key, you may really have raised the suspicion that you were about to go home, take out a file, make a master key, and go on a fun round of housebreaking.

(Obviously, you would not turn your original key into a master, because then when your landlord or the cops asked you to produce it, it would be tampered with.)

Incidentally: Because master keys are variations on the shape of non-master keys, your key doesn't need a "serial number" or embedded chips to match it up with other keys from your building.

Eh, I'm not convinced it's such a cut and dry story. Landlords, superintendents, porters, elevator operators and doormen can be as sketchy as tenants (like me, ha ha). Disgruntled porters get sick of taking the garbage to the curb and unclogging yet another toilet for someone, quit without notice, and "lose" keys all the time.

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

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