https://www.wired.com/2016/03/study-finds-24-car-models-open...
They pop the hood, apparently.
http://www.khou.com/news/crime/high-tech-thieves-crooks-usin...
The rest is all 'digital', no further use of force required.
Wouldn't popping the hood also require breaking a window or otherwise getting in the car to pull the release?
After that the procedure would be fairly easy: open the door with the still unlearned key, learn the new key ID to the ECU (takes < 1 minute) using the laptop, after that you can start the car.
One handy tip I got from the police after my own car got stolen (a VW transporter camper) was that you should mask off a chunk of the VIN so thieves can't use the VIN to order keys that will fit the car (but that still need to be programmed in the ECU in order to allow a start).
Whether or not it is effective is another matter (and that's hoping there is only one instance of the VIN on your car, there may be other, less obvious ones for instance bar-codes).
There are a fair amount of modern cars that don't actually require you to get into the car to pop the hood if you know what you're doing. On earlier cars[1] there was no latch inside the car.
1) they don't have the electronics for this stuff however - simple hot wiring will do
Short answer, it depends. There are a lot of very simple methods to bypass having to actually get in the car to pop the hood.
But unless they can remotely unlock the doors with their device, they will be breaking in at some point.
Being an experienced mechanic means you practically have all the skills needed to be a great car theif.
My neighbor had his wrangler stolen a few years ago. I wasn't surprised.
I suppose I should have been worried that other people can do that too, but my truck never got broken into or stolen to my knowledge. Security through obscurity. I now drive a Mazda with key fob and push-button ignition. It's got its own vulnerabilities but I'll let the insurance company worry about that.
My sympathies on the Ford Ranger if you had it in a climate with snow. I had 700 lbs of sand in the bed over the back axle and good snow tires (not studs) and still got stuck. Everyone I talked to thought those things were death traps.
1) along with the Mazda B4000 which was a Ford Ranger with a different paint job and grill - even said Ford Ranger in the door
Reality is that this kind of theft never is as straightforward as the article tells you. In this case it required the thieves to break into the car first, then reprogram the key. The thief can't just walk up to the car and type some magic commands on a laptop and drive of. It requires him to break the lock/door/glass to get in first. That's about the same as how car theft was done in the early years: break in, hotwire the ignition, (bump)start the car. This "new" method even requires more time than hotwiring, so car manufacturers did actually make their cars harder to steal in some sense...