Sadly for me, I'm not in the financial position in which I can "self-insure", so I am going to be stuck having to enter those contracts for indemnity. Fortunately, thus far, the insurers have been very good. We'll see what happens when I get to the stage of replacing the bike.
But going back to the original theft, once over the initial stages of denial, anger, and bargaining... ...at the beginning of the depression stage I started thinking about the topic of keyless ride; these scrotes had taken the bike, but I still had all the keys: so how do they get it going again?
I really enjoy keyless ride. The key goes in the pocket, gets zipped up and doesn't come out. Only the dumb key, cut for the purpose opening the panniers, etc. comes out of the other pocket. At home, the main key is kept away from the front door and is suitably radio signal protected.
So to get the bike going again, without major surgery, these scrotes are going to have to go and get a new key encoded.
My first stop then was to ask the dealer (from where the bike was purchased and maintained), what the process would be to get a new key. Essentially, the dealer receives the request from "the owner", cross checks registered keeper information (V5C) to make sure that matches up, then, once they've authenticated the request, pass it on the BMW. New keyless fobs have to be encoded by the mothership at the factory. And BMW rely upon the dealer to perform those due diligence checks. Which works fine in the UK provided the dealer is appropriately diligent with the checking (let's trust them for these purposes and leave aside the potential for them to also be conned by forged V5C documents).
In the conversation with the friendly dealer, it transpired that the dealers have no way to mark a bike on their BMW dealer systems as being stolen. Curious, I asked BMW Customer Services about this and about what measures they took to make sure they don't issue a keyless fob for a stolen bike.
Customer Services kindly responded, saying: "Whilst our BMW Approved Centre can't report vehicles in our system as stolen, BMW work with "retainagain" who update our systems based off the national police database. I can confirm your vehicle is marked as stolen in our systems.
On to the second point you raised regarding keys:
- BMW Group specialist security teams continuously design and enhance security systems in every BMW and BMW Motorrad vehicle.
- The hardware and software architectures meet very high security and data protection standards and use cryptographic methods and secure design principles.
- BMW does not publicly disclose detailed security measures or encryption methods, because secrecy is crucial to staying ahead of organised criminals.
- Unfortunately, no security system can guarantee absolute protection against criminal activity. Thieves are constantly developing more sophisticated methods, and this is a global challenge affecting all modern vehicles.
- BMW works closely with police and other authorities to respond to new threats, investigate incidents, and continuously strengthen security layers in the vehicle."
...and, if I was them, I wouldn't want to explain the in-and-outs of the encryption and cryptogram exchange protocols between components to a complete stranger either. Fair enough. And having spent many years in the payments industry, I know it is a constant arms race with the criminal fraternity to stay ahead and keep things safe (let's not get into whether Anthropic's Mythos is a good or bad thing, please).
But, if the thieves are not getting a new key from BMW, just how are they are circumventing the electronics and that cryptographic exchange to make that R1250GS work once again and give them a reasonable profit return for their endeavours? Any thoughts anyone?
But going back to the original theft, once over the initial stages of denial, anger, and bargaining... ...at the beginning of the depression stage I started thinking about the topic of keyless ride; these scrotes had taken the bike, but I still had all the keys: so how do they get it going again?
I really enjoy keyless ride. The key goes in the pocket, gets zipped up and doesn't come out. Only the dumb key, cut for the purpose opening the panniers, etc. comes out of the other pocket. At home, the main key is kept away from the front door and is suitably radio signal protected.
So to get the bike going again, without major surgery, these scrotes are going to have to go and get a new key encoded.
My first stop then was to ask the dealer (from where the bike was purchased and maintained), what the process would be to get a new key. Essentially, the dealer receives the request from "the owner", cross checks registered keeper information (V5C) to make sure that matches up, then, once they've authenticated the request, pass it on the BMW. New keyless fobs have to be encoded by the mothership at the factory. And BMW rely upon the dealer to perform those due diligence checks. Which works fine in the UK provided the dealer is appropriately diligent with the checking (let's trust them for these purposes and leave aside the potential for them to also be conned by forged V5C documents).
In the conversation with the friendly dealer, it transpired that the dealers have no way to mark a bike on their BMW dealer systems as being stolen. Curious, I asked BMW Customer Services about this and about what measures they took to make sure they don't issue a keyless fob for a stolen bike.
Customer Services kindly responded, saying: "Whilst our BMW Approved Centre can't report vehicles in our system as stolen, BMW work with "retainagain" who update our systems based off the national police database. I can confirm your vehicle is marked as stolen in our systems.
On to the second point you raised regarding keys:
- BMW Group specialist security teams continuously design and enhance security systems in every BMW and BMW Motorrad vehicle.
- The hardware and software architectures meet very high security and data protection standards and use cryptographic methods and secure design principles.
- BMW does not publicly disclose detailed security measures or encryption methods, because secrecy is crucial to staying ahead of organised criminals.
- Unfortunately, no security system can guarantee absolute protection against criminal activity. Thieves are constantly developing more sophisticated methods, and this is a global challenge affecting all modern vehicles.
- BMW works closely with police and other authorities to respond to new threats, investigate incidents, and continuously strengthen security layers in the vehicle."
...and, if I was them, I wouldn't want to explain the in-and-outs of the encryption and cryptogram exchange protocols between components to a complete stranger either. Fair enough. And having spent many years in the payments industry, I know it is a constant arms race with the criminal fraternity to stay ahead and keep things safe (let's not get into whether Anthropic's Mythos is a good or bad thing, please).
But, if the thieves are not getting a new key from BMW, just how are they are circumventing the electronics and that cryptographic exchange to make that R1250GS work once again and give them a reasonable profit return for their endeavours? Any thoughts anyone?
. So unless they have left the bike running over a several day period, these guys have found a way to bypass the security Bmw have developed. Once I knew the circumstances of the location of my bike and how it was being thrashed to in an inch of its life, I didn't want it back and resigned myself to having to pay increased insurance premiums on my vehicles.
….no damage done except a mess in the thieves pants
