LOCK, STOCK AND PICKLE

Sneak was alarmed to learn that many of the cable locks used to deter laptop thieves can be bypassed with relative ease, given the right tools. And amazingly the right tools are not a finely-crafted set of skeleton keys and a large pair of bolt-croppers, but a Bic biro and a toilet-roll tube, according to a recent US newspaper exposé. Twitch-fingered lock-breakers Marc Tobias and the appropriately-named Matt Fiddler uncovered trivial vulnerabilities in a variety of security cables from top-name makers such as Kensington and Targus, and Tobias was happy to demonstrate the failings to reporters. To save readers the bother of wading through all 862 words in the story, Sneak can cut directly to the beef. If you don't want to see your much-loved laptop up for sale on eBay, Tobias recommends the PC Guardian ComboLock. "It's a nice piece of work," he says. Which probably means that he knows how to open that one too, but is not telling.