Lock Bumping

Wow. After all these years someone has come up with a new (?) and spectaculary effective (?) way to pick a standard Yale-type lock. It's called "Lock Bumping" You can see how effective it is in the last 15 seconds of the first video on this page. Wikipedia has an nice explanation of how it works. You may be familiar with the design of the Yale lock

and with "Newton's Cradle" a popular executive toy

The secret to the method is to tap on a special key somewhat like the first image above. The teeth of the key knock the red pins, which knock the blue pins. Like in Newton's cradle, the red pins stay in place while the blue pins shoot up for a fraction of a second. If the teeth of the key are short, the resulting gap between the blue and red pins will span the lock core, allowing it to turn. With some rotational force added, the lock is opened.

I find it amazing that someone is has only recently come up with this.