Well it seems ATM skimming has resurfaced with the clever criminals finally gaining the ability to remove the anti-skimming devices and modify them to their own nefarious ends.

Banks in Europe are seeing innovative skimming attacks against ATMs, where fraudsters rig special devices to the cash machines to record payment card details.

Many banks have fitted ATMs with devices that are designed to thwart criminals from attaching skimmers to the machines. But it now appears in some areas that those devices are being successfully removed and then modified for skimming, according to the latest report from the European ATM Security Team (EAST), which collects data on ATM fraud throughout Europe.

Skimming devices are designed to record the account details from the magnetic stripe on the back of a payment card. The data can then be encoded onto a dummy card. A person’s PIN (personal identification number) is often captured with a micro-camera, which was done with the illicitly modified anti-skimming devices, according to the report.

Banks in five countries also reported seeing a new type of skimming device, which uses a modified MP3 player to record card details. It also has a micro-camera to record PINs, according to a photo seen by IDG News Service

The advantage of ATM skimming rather than just plain old hacking the data online is that with the placement of a small camera you can also record the PIN number associated with each card – so after cloning it you can actually use it to withdraw money from the ATM.

It seems like the new skimming devices are much more high tech and also use off the shelf components, such as an MP3 player.

EAST doesn’t reveal which banks noticed the fraud or the country in which it occurred. EAST only notes whether the attack occurred in a country that is a “major deployer” of ATMs — where there are more than 40,000 machines in the country. Those countries include France, Germany, Spain, Russia and the U.K.

Installing malicious software on an ATM is a more sophisticated way to execute fraud. One country of the five major deployers saw this style of attack, which was first seen in Eastern Europe in 2007.

ATMs often run operating systems such as Microsoft’s Windows CE and are vulnerable to attacks executed remotely and by people who break into the machines to install malware. Both kinds of attacks were demonstrated by security researcher Barnaby Jack at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas in July.

European banks haven’t seen a new kind of attack called “shimming.” This attack involved inserting an extremely thin plastic circuit board into a point-of-sale device or ATM. It then can record data either on the card itself or transmit the data using a wireless transmitter. Due to the design of ATM machines in Europe, “we don’t think shimming is an ATM threat,” said Lachlan Gunn, EAST’s coordinator.

They haven’t really released any details such as which banks were effected or even which countries the skimming attacks took place in. There has actually been a record number of skimming attempts this year but the losses have dropped.

I’d guess that would be due to the new security-measures built into the EMV (Europay, Mastercard, Visa) ATM cards which have a chip built in that EMV compliant ATM machines can scan and verify.

Source: Network World

It’s seems like a new hacker is in the sights of the US Government, this time it’s Ehud Tenenbaum AKA ‘The Analyzer’.

He seems to have been quite sloppy about covering his tracks and remaining under the radar, he acts as if no-one can get him. Perhaps he knows something we don’t?

Anyway he’s firmly under investigation now having first popped onto the radar 10 years at the age of 19 for hacking into Pentagon computers.

Ehud Tenenbaum, an Israeli hacker arrested in Canada last year for allegedly stealing about $1.5 million from Canadian banks, also allegedly hacked two U.S. banks, a credit and debit card distribution company and a payment processor in what U.S. authorities are calling a global “cashout” conspiracy.

The U.S. hacks have resulted in at least $10 million in losses, according to court records obtained by Threat Level, and are just part of a larger international conspiracy to hack financial institutions in the United States and abroad.

The broadened case highlights the continued vulnerability of U.S. financial networks to cybercrime, despite supposedly tight industry security standards. It comes on the heels of other multimillion-dollar heists that also breached the security protecting ATM codes and account information. In late 2007, criminals used four hacked iWire payroll cards to steal $5 million from ATMs around the world in just two days. Shortly thereafter, a processing server that handles withdrawals from Citibank-branded ATMs at 7-Eleven convenience stores was cracked, leading crooks to converge on New York to withdraw at least $2 million from Citibank accounts using the stolen ATM data. And a carefully coordinated global heist last November resulted in a one-day haul of $9 million in cash, following a breach at payment processor RBS WorldPay.

It seems like the US banking system has some major problems, with all their self-invented, self-imposed regulations (SOX, PCI, ISO27001 etc.) you’d think they would be more secure.

Obviously all these regulations and reams of paperwork are just making things worse, burying problems under tonnes of dead trees really doesn’t help.

It’s a very International crime network with participants all over the World including Dutch servers and hackers in Russia and Turkey.

According to the affidavit, in October 2007, the United States Secret Service began investigating “an international conspiracy” to hack into computer networks of U.S. financial institutions and other businesses. As part of that investigation, agents examined network intrusions that occurred in January and February 2008 at OmniAmerican Credit Union, based in Fort Worth, Texas, and Global Cash Card of Irvine, California, a distributor of prepaid debit cards used primarily for payroll payments.

In both cases, the attacker gained access using a SQL injection attack that exploited a vulnerability in the company’s database software. The attacker grabbed credit and debit card numbers that were then used by thieves in several countries to withdraw more than $1 million from ATMs.

In April and May 2008, agents investigated two additional hacks at 1st Source Bank in Indiana, and at Symmetrex, a prepaid debit card processor based in Florida. The intruder again used a SQL injection attack, and losses added up to more than $3 million.

It seems like this might have been going on for some time, he managed to pull similar stunts in both Canada and the US and perhaps even Greece too.

I wonder where he is now, and where he’s going to hit next. Or perhaps he won’t, he must have plenty of cash to lay low in some country with no extradition treaty with the US.

Do read the whole article as it’s very interesting.

Source: Wired Blog

It seems like ATM hacking is still the way to go for those into a bit of hardware hacking. One of the most notorious and well known ATM hackers was recently arrest in Turkey and a list of his tips discovered online where he also sold the ATM skimming equipment.

Well his tips can’t be THAT good if he got caught can they?

A bank-machine hacker who reportedly was arrested earlier this month in Turkey gave would-be fraudsters tips on how to install rogue card-reading devices, including advising them to target drive-through ATMs (automated teller machines) and avoid towns with fewer than 15,000 residents.

The hacker, who went by the handle “Chao,” reportedly was arrested earlier this month in Turkey. He was one of the most well-known ATM hackers in the world, according to Uri Rivner, head of new technologies for RSA Consumer Solutions.

Chao sold fake faceplates that fraudsters could attach to the card slots in ATMs. These “skimmer” devices can read the magnetic stripe of every customer’s ATM or credit card, and are often used in conjunction with a hidden camera that watches people enter their PINs (personal identification numbers), Rivner said. Alternatively, criminals can attach an extra keypad on top of the one in the machine and capture the PIN that way, he added.

It seems like the old methods are still prevailing but the kit used is probably lot smaller, neater and unobtrusive. They skim your card, record your pin on the number pad with a micro dot camera and usually beam it all to a wifi PC nearby which will pipe it back to the owner over the net with a 3G phone or similar.

Just be careful where you use the ATM machine and cover the numberpad with your other hand when you are typing to the PIN to be extra vigilant.

• don’t install a skimmer in the morning, because people are more vigilant then;
• determine where a person would have to stand to keep an eye on everything happening on that block;
• avoid blocks where more than 250 people per day walk through, because of the danger of detection;
• don’t install skimmers in towns with fewer than 15,000 people, because people in those towns know what their ATMs look like;
• avoid areas with small shops open 24 hours a day, because there may be surveillance cameras and vigilant shopkeepers;
• don’t set up in areas where a lot of illegal immigrants live;
• places with a lot of tourist traffic are good;
• look for affluent neighborhoods and drive-through ATMs;
• ATMs near cash-only bars are a good bet for lots of customer activity.

The tips are really nothing ground-breaking, but interesting to read nevertheless. Most of them could be considered common sense, but some like not targeting really small towns are quite interesting.

I would have thought busy times would have been the best time to go in as long as there is no-one else queuing at the ATM machine.

Source: NetworkWorld