ATMs targeted
It seems getting money out of the wall isn’t as safe as it used to be, card cloning is commonplace in certain areas but now it we have another problem. A researcher at Sophos found an interesting Trojan that could data mine card details from an ATM, and then print them off on a slip… very convenient.
As a personal precaution, I tend to check the card slot to make sure it doesn’t look out of place. This includes things like a hidden reader inside the original card slot, or some other device. Of course, if it’s good enough then you won’t even see it but still, no harm in looking. In addition, this may sound like common sense, but check your bank statements for irregular amounts being withdrawn. Even if it’s a 1p withdrawal, check every entry. There was an incident whereby 1p was withdrawn from thousands of accounts simultaneously, 1p may not be much but multiply that and you have a decent amount.
Talking of ATMs, this brings me nicely to an incident I experienced with some American colleagues I used to work with on a project 2 years ago. This was at my previous job; because the parent company was American, we tend to have collaboration projects from across the pond. In this particular instance, it was an Exchange migration and two of the guys from US HQ popped over to help us. After a long and hard week (we didn’t sleep for 35 hours), I decided to take them out to dinner on their last day. They needed some cash so we went to an ATM, unfortunately it needed dinner itself and ate his card. Afterwards, it rebooted into Windows NT and started to do a McAfee virus scan. Suffice it to say, at this point I was keeling over from laughing so much. It’s something that I will fondly remember forever, saying that he wasn’t very happy is an understatement.
Halifax/Bank of Scotland ATM - Windows NT and McAfee
Incidentally, it was a Halifax/Bank of Scotland cash point and ever since that day, I have stopped using that particular machine. I presume it thought a card from Bank of America was malware and it needed to cleanse itself from it. The fact it uses Windows NT surprised me completely, at least install XP and I bet you wouldn’t get this problem with a Linux ATM. Just so you know, we did have our dinner. Actually it was fantastic, he had a corporate American Express card and we had no qualms about using it. Final bill for all three of us was around £180, I think most of it was just comfort food for consolation, like the champagne… I do miss those perks.
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email Tags: Agilis 91x, ATM trojan