[Noisebridge-discuss] keyscanner

Jake jake at spaz.org
Thu Feb 9 08:17:53 UTC 2012


here's a new idea:

what about a peripheral by the door that has a slot to accept a physical, 
old-fashioned key.

Inside the slot is a white lighted wall on one side and a piece of glass 
on the other.  A webcam is fixed-focus onto the white wall and sees a 
high-contrast image of the key when it is inserted.

the bottom of the keyway is a metal contact, and when it is shorted to the 
rim of the entryway of the keyhole, the camera takes a picture.

A computer takes the high-contrast image and compares it to the images on 
record.  If the image matches one in the good list, the door is buzzed 
open.

this means we can use any random key from a junk pile at the flea market. 
I personally have access to a large coffeecan of old keys that go to 
nothing at all, and i'm sure there are plenty of them.

people can also use their car key or house key or whatever.
don't laugh.  what are you laughing about?

well if you're worried about a hackerspace having a picture of your 
housekey then just use a junk key to get into the space instead.

what, are you worried about having a key on your keychain that ties you to 
a hackerspace?  You want to use a trapdoor algorithm for the key images?
fine.  I'm sure it can be done with the appropriate tradeoff between 
anonymity and speed of key recognition, since it has to search the entire 
keyspace...

if someone else will do the software, i will build the hardware.

-jake



More information about the Noisebridge-discuss mailing list