the pen is mightier than the… kryptonite lock?
It has been reported that some models of kryptonite locks can be opened with a Bic pen…
This could be a hoax but there is video footage. We shall see… In the meantime, if you bike to work like I do, you might want to hedge your u-lock with a chain or something… I’ve already gotten one bike stolen in this town last year on a Sunday during the day downtown. I’ll be damned if it’s happening again.
Yeah, it’s true.
There’s more than one video floating around. The guys over at Engadget released one yesterday.
It’s at http://www.engadget.com/common/videos/pt/lock.wmv
so I wonder if Kryptonite will sue the Bic company under the DMCA? Sorry.. Geek joke.
This technique has apparently been around for a decade or so (see Google groups), but now the cat’s definitely out of the bag. If not with a Bic, then someone can make cheap skeleton key with a custom plastic cyllinder, effectively making circular keyed locks obsolete.
That said, it’s now a race between the newly-tooled thieves and bike owners. I’m of the mind that as many people should know about this as possible, since the pool of thieves is smaller than the pool of owners. If it just remains in the blogosphere, then the thieves have a great window of opportunity.
On the way to work today, I saw a few dozen bikes locked up with compromized equipment. How long until they’re penjacked?
BTW – The vendor has acknowledged it now.
What a lovely little “tough shit” response the guys have posted over at Engadget..
http://www.engadget.com/entry/8154041173872584/
From the above
KryptoniteÂ’s response:
We understand there are concerns regarding tubular cylinders used in some Kryptonite locks. The tubular cylinder, a standard industry-wide design, has been successfully used for more than 30 years in our products and other security applications without significant issues.
The current Kryptonite locks based on a tubular cylinder design continue to present an effective deterrent to theft. As part of our continuing commitment to produce performance and improved security, Kryptonite has been developing a disc-style cylinder for some years. In 2000, Kryptonite introduced the disc-style cylinder in its premier line of products, the New York series. In 2002, Kryptonite began development of a new disc cylinder system for both its Evolution and KryptoLok product lines, which currently use the tubular cylinder design. These products are scheduled to be introduced in the next few weeks.
We are accelerating the delivery of the new disc cylinder locks and we will communicate directly with our distributors, dealers