Subject: To all Bike owners who use U-locks by Kryptonite - BAD NEWS This is not good. I never lock up my road bike but I am always on my MTB in the city and this is not good.
A friend of mine forwarded this to me. It was apparently just in the NY Times.
I haven't seen a posting on this yet, so I thought I'd warn all of you who depend on these locks to keep your bikes safe. U-locks by Kryptonite and other companies which use the barrel-shaped key are vulnerable to picking with--believe it or not--a plastic Bic pen. I tried this myself, successfully, on my own lock and was able to spring it in less than 30 seconds. These video clips show others doing the same thing:
http://thirdrate.com/misc/krypto.mov
http://biginjapan.com/extranet/assets/ben/krypto_ev_disc_web.mov
http://bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=66128&page=1&pp=30
I called Kryptonite (see www.kryptonitelock.com ) and they said they'd only heard about the vulnerability on Monday and that "things are going crazy here." No doubt. But they said they were looking at solutions. |