Trying to get your buddy out of the clink? Hit up your friendly neighbourhood Fablab, churn out this handy double-ended key and chances are you’ll be able to uncuff him quicker than you can say, “I didn’t do it officer.” A German hacker named Ray has demonstrated the key vulnerability in a great majority of hand-cuffs with two keys he created, commonly used throughout the world to escape the metal wrist restraints.
3D Printed Hand-cuff Key
The keys are fashioned after others and quite easily used an applicable to a range of cuffs since most of the lock mechanisms are all the same… for simplicity’s sake.
He was able to open handcuffs built by the German firm Bonowi and the English manufacturer Chubb who both use a single key design for their products. Although the keys are purportedly harder to come by than more standard cuffs & not commercially available, Ray says he bought a Chubb key from eBay, and obtained the rarer Bonowi key through an unnamed source. He reverse engineered the keys & built CAD models that he then cut in plexiglass with a laser cutter and printed in ABS plastic with a Repman 3D printer.
Go Ahead, Throw Away the Key
Your first thought might be, “pfft, whatever. Get back to me when they copy a specific key.” But, that’s exactly what is happening. Last year, the good people at Ultimaker showed off how they took a picture of an officer arresting someone and printed the key on HANGING OFF HIS BELT.
It gets crazier. Fabbaloo reported last year that students at the USCD Vision Lab ‘tele-duplicated keys via optical decoding’.
In the top image… the keys were photographed from almost 200 feet away (from a spy position on the rooftop of a 4 story building). The theory was that a security attack could take place remotely without the victim being aware of the theft. The experiment proved conclusively that this could be done, even when the key is positioned at various angles.
In other words, Students from USCD took a picture of your keys from a distance, 3D printed them and are looting your house right now. Keep your keys in your pocket.
Source: Shapeways, Erik DeBruijn, Fabbaloo and USCD
