Re-keying every lock in your house all by yourself | Hacker News Reader

Re-keying every lock in your house all by yourself

a.wholelottanothing.org

17 pointscolinprince13 comments

> The best part was my original key wasn’t even a Smart Key, but the existing Kwikset key that came with the house.

So the old property owner (plus who knows who else) can still get into the place — and through every door with nothing more than what used to be the front door key?

What a missed opportunity.

Yeah, that’s a big mistake. The author should have at least had a new key cut, preferably one with a difficult-to-pick bitting.

From a security perspective (which is presumably the point when discussing locks), one would use different keys for all doors; or at least for all external doors. I understand the convenience of using a single key, but the author really should have cut a new key instead of using an existing one.

>one would use different keys for all doors

This sounds like common sense, but when you think about it, how is this more secure? You're going to store all the keys together anyway, so if you lose them, you lose them all. And it's not like a thief can make a fake key after picking your lock, they have to pick all your locks individually anyway... So how does it help if your front/side/back/garage doors all have different keys?

It does not make sense to me either unless there are some unspoken assumptions. For example, if you give a copy to a cleaning service, you may want to give only the front door to require access visible from a camera or something like that.

I grew up in a house with nine exterior doors (not very large, just every room had an exterior door) and getting them keyed the same was a wonderful upgrade.

It doesn’t. Someone tried to apply digital key management to the physical world, and mapped it poorly. There is zero value in having each door to the same space have different keys. There is some marginal value in having different spaces having different keys (house, storage unit, detached garage), except that generally you will lose the entire key ring when you lose one, so the separation doesn’t net much.

I like different spaces having different keys. If someone is house sitting, then I can give them the one key they need and not worry about snooping.

Obviously a bad actor could get around it no problem, I’m just keeping out the honest

Different keys for what, though? Separate spaces? Sure. Front and back doors? Pointless complication.

If you’re buying a new house using locks that have contractor keys, you absolutely should rekey your locks, if for no reason other than to remove the contractor key aligned pins. After a quick analysis, my entire subdivision (100+ houses) could be opened with just 6 specifically crafted keys, and each of your neighbors has enough information in their locks to determine how to make those keys.

I don't know where you live, but at least here (Italy) locks that have "contractors keys" can only be opened with contractors key until the "proprietor" key is used once (with an "installing maneuvre"), and then contractors key won't work anymore.

What you describe is more like the master key systems (used as an example in some hotels) where there is generally a three level (but there can be more) set of keys, the manager's one (that opens all doors/locks), the maid one (that opens - say - all doors/locks in a floor) and the actual customer one where each key only opens a single lock.

Replacing all of your locks doesn't really fit into the category that I'd call re-keying. It might be the way to go for anyone not at all into DIY, but you can buy a Kwikset compatible pin kit on Ebay for under $6 (in the US at least), and it can do several locks.

It looks like the author's total cost was $170, which is probably enough that it would have been worth getting a quote from a locksmith so see if they could have done it cheaper. Especially if you're willing to take the locks off yourself and take them to a hardware store or locksmith.

>which is probably enough that it would have been worth getting a quote from a locksmith

He mentions basically doing that:

> I researched getting a locksmith to come out, it would run hundreds of dollars in their time plus you can only re-key locks to a key made by the same manufacturer

> I could save money by bringing the locks to a locksmith’s store, replacing off brands with a single brand and re-installing myself, and there are esoteric expensive kits on Amazon for locksmith-style rekeying, but each brand requires it’s own $80 box of materials plus many hours of practice to master

It does not take hours to master rekeying a lock. It would take hours to do a whole house but probably an hour at most for the first.

hmmm... I was trying to understand how the smartkey system worked and ran across this article:

"Millions of Kwikset Smartkey Locks Vulnerable to Hacking, Say Researchers"

https://www.wired.com/2013/08/kwikset-smarkey-lock-vulns/

EDIT: and then I noticed there is smartkey gen 1, gen 2 and gen 3 so I'm not sure if this is applicable.

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