Sunday, September 03, 2006

New type of ATM-attack: rebuild the front...

The Dutch society this week viewed tv-programme's in which a new attack on ATM's was revealed. Crooks now rebuilt part of the front of an ATM, ensuring that a card would flow through this fake front towards the proper piano device into the ATM. This gave them stripe-date. And by also observing the PIN-code they would have it all.

Of course the method is no different from making a fake-front for a bank office (so that merchants do not deposit their cash in the bank but in the crooks fake mailbox). But still, it shows that it took the criminals 1 to 1,5 years to get a new attack on ATM's up and running. Not bad for a product innovation period... ;-)

Interestingly the day after the Tv-show, an alert citizen noticed strange things happening at the local ATM and phoned the police. They got there quickly and arrested two crooks that were cashing (with a bunch of white-cards). Which IMHO shows that public and consumer education is key to prevention and detection.