🇫🇷 Clés incopiables : contournements, exceptions et paradoxes - MrJack / vidoQ

### Overview In this talk, Alexandre (Mister Jack) and vidoQ examine physical intrusion security focusing on high-security keys marketed as "uncopyable" or protected against unauthorized duplication. The speakers argue that so-called uncopyable keys are primarily protected by legal mechanisms (such as utility patents, designs and models, or trademarked logos) and commercial distribution controls rather than insurmountable technical obstacles. Through demonstrations and real-world penetration testing anecdotes, they showcase how legal, technical, and procedural protections can be bypassed through picking, impressioning, blank modification, or exploiting organizational flaws.

### Key Topics - **Legal vs. Technical Protection**: Patents and trademarks restrict third-party key cutters from creating blanks, but patents are publicly readable documentation that describe exactly how locks work. In addition, patents are geographically limited and expire after 20 years, while trademarks only protect distinct logos rather than functional keyway geometry. - **Mobile Elements (Moving Parts)**: Analysis of keys with moving parts—such as spring-loaded rods, floating rings, ball bearings, or bias-in-axis components—designed to prevent molding and machine cutting. - **Bypass Techniques**: Molding workarounds, physical punching/hammering profiles to trigger internal mechanisms without mobile parts, self-impressioning tools, lock picking, and straight drilling to bypass angled cuts. - **Procedural and Logical Bypass Paradoxes**: Techniques such as master-key escalation from standard keys, re-pinning cylinders to match existing keys without authorization cards, and delayed two-step copying across incompatible key profiles.

### Technical Details - **Defeating Mobile Elements**: While mobile elements complicate direct casting or standard cutting, adversaries can mold the key body, drill out the mobile pocket, and insert an identical loose ball bearing. Alternatively, punch marks or protrusions stamped onto a standard blank can press the internal lock pin directly without using a mobile part at all. - **Lock Picking & Impressioning**: The speakers emphasize that mobile elements generally do not prevent lock picking, as the internal pins simply need to be lifted to shear line height with a pick. For impressioning, specialized wire extensions inserted along key grooves or tools with elastic bands can simulate mobile spring tension to clear the shear line. - **Bypassing Angled Cuts (BIA)**: Locks with angled drillings (e.g., 14° to 30° bevels) can often be bypassed on regular non-tilting key machines by drilling straight holes that are laterally offset, achieving the same pin interaction depth without reproducing the exact angle. - **Key Profile Manipulation**: Filing down key stops or key tips by 1 mm allows non-native blanks to enter restricted cylinders. Trademarked key profiles can also be sourced from foreign markets where patents do not apply or where generic non-branded blanks are legal. - **Hierarchical Key Escalation**: In master key systems, individual office keys sharing the same profile can have missing cuts manually added with a file or pantograph to convert them into building-wide master keys.

### Takeaways - Commercial "uncopyable" protections primarily safeguard manufacturer revenue and deter casual copying rather than stopping determined adversaries or burglars. - Physical penetration testers and security professionals should never rely solely on a manufacturer's promise of key restriction cards or patented blanks. - True physical security requires holistic key lifecycle management, understanding underlying mechanical vulnerabilities, and recognizing that complex high-security lock designs often introduce unexpected logical flaws.