“Pirating keys is becoming like pirating movies.” — MIT Student David Lawrence

Two students at MIT have demonstrated how 3D printing can be used to duplicate some of the most secure keys in the industry. David Lawrence, 20, and Eric Van Albert, 21, demonstrated their technique in a presentation at security industry conference Defcon 21 in Las Vegas this past weekend.

The team used a flatbed scanner in combination with a 3D model template to develop an exact digital copy of a high security Schlage Primus key. This file, they explained, can be 3D printed in a material durable enough to open locks, for example, titanium from i.Materialise.

“If we show that mechanical locks are vulnerable to key duplication just by having a handful of numbers you can download off the internet, hopefully they ‘ll be phased out more quickly… Either that or make 3D printers illegal,” said Van Albert in an interview with Forbes.

Lawrence added, “In the past if you wanted a Primus key, you had to go through Schlage. Now you just need the information contained in the key, and somewhere to 3D-print it.  You can take a high security ‘non-duplicatable’ key and basically take it to a virtual hardware store to get it copied.”

Read their full interview at Forbes.

Lawrence has also made available the 3D model templates on his website.