Thinking like a hacker

A friend of mine just had his house finished and the keys got handed over. Exciting! Awesome!It's post to Facebook exciting!!Up until you realize that the key is the physical artifact that gives you access to the inside of the house. House keys aren't RF coded like car keys so all you need is a piece of metal that looks the same.I figured there was a way of taking a picture of a key and making a real key.I found one. I'm even trying it out!  :-)No, not with the posted keys. I'm not that nefarious, nor is the site I'm trying out. KeysDulicated.com lets you take the front and back of your key (and they make sure that someone is holding onto the key as well) and they'll analyze it and cut you another one to match. They claim to cut better than a copy since they cut to the spec of the key, not just simply duplicate the profile of the key itself.Their key robot has analyzed my key and cut one. It should be in the mail (* to my office) now!While I try not to go through life paranoid and scared of the world it does pay off to be a bit of a white-hat hacker to make sure you don't step on any potential land-mines.(Yes, don't worry -- I've applied several transforms to the bits of the key that make it unique! It's not just a simple pixelate transform that you're seeing. ;-) There are techniques to reverse a simple pixelate -- especially if there are several different versions that are equivalently transformed!)