Throughout Europe there has been an uptick in stolen BMW ‘s. Not because thieves are flat bedding them away as in years past, but because thieves have gone high tech and begun to clone keys. The key cloning is simple once the expensive cloning device is had, and that requires no form of law enforcement involvement to obtain- just that you operate a car repair facility. In under 3 minutes a car can be had with no damage and moved on to Eastern Europe and Russia. Thousands of cars are estimated to have been victim of this string of thefts which began in later last year and went into full swing by this Spring.

According to Auto Express, BMW has a fix for the problem which seems to be only with 2007- 9/2011 builds. The current software flash is for X5 and X6 models but BMW is said to have its engineers coding away on fixes for other models and that should be ready in just in time for Christmas. Check out the videos after the break.

Key cloning in action and unfortunately the thieves made away with an irreplaceable 1M in under 3 minutes.