Did you watch the video in that article? It doesn't seem to line up at all with the text of the article, oddly. You see the guy for a moment and then the video skips forward and he's sitting in the Jeep with the alarm going off. The alarm appears to have been going for a good couple of minutes.

Wouldn't popping the hood also require breaking a window or otherwise getting in the car to pull the release?

I think they have to have the key already, but still 'blank' That will likely open the door but it would normally raise the alarm, that's why they start under the hood first, to disable that.

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).

Isn't it illegal to remove the VIN?

Here apparently it isn't if you mask it. That's not the same as removing it, but your local police might have a different opinion.

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).

That's why they said "mask off" instead of "file off". On some (many? all?) cars the VIN is stamped on a plate that's visible through the windshield.

> Wouldn't popping the hood also require breaking a window or otherwise getting in the car to pull the release?

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

>wouldn't popping the hood require breaking into the car first

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.

Jeep Wranglers have external manual hood latches, not sure which vehicle is the subject of the article though.

Jeeps used to have awful security, so the fact that these thieves had to take an extra step or two, rather than just jimmying door and bumpstarting the car, means they have actually increased security.

My neighbor had his wrangler stolen a few years ago. I wasn't surprised.

Depending on the car the hood can be released from underneath but it's a massive pain and requires contorting arms in unnatural ways.

If you are targeting a specific kind of car, like Jeeps, you can easily create a small device that will bump the hood open quickly and easily.