[bipson]

I was particularly looking for such (in fact these) questions while going backwards through the article again, and I must say:

I don't think you have a point here. All of these steps can be easily done while the lock is on the door. There are plenty of tools availabe to drill holes this way.

Nobody said it is "faster/slower/easier/more difficult" than existing attacks. It is a valid attack, it is quick and it makes almost no noise and worse: It isn't even obvious (you need to actively search for a tiny hole, otherwise you're just assuming all is OK)