ATMs Now High-Profile Cybercrime Targets

[Peaches]

ATMs Now High-Profile Cybercrime Targets

Automated teller machines (ATMs) are now targets for criminals of all sorts. After all, as the famous saying goes, that’s where the money is.

One common way to attack ATMs is via skimmers, devices that steal the data encoded on the magnetic strips of ATM cards. They can take a wide variety of form factors, from the to the more . One example, which we have blogged about earlier, was United States, as similar schemes have been found in China. that are used to skim data from credit and debit cards. This threat, however, is not limited to the

Advanced (and more expensive) models send their captured data to the cybercriminals via existing cellular phone networks. Criminals on a budget can rent skimmers with a 50/50 income split between the owner and the renter. (Some of the links in the above-mentioned paragraphs go to Brian Kreb’s blog, as Krebs has frequently discussed the ATM skimmer threat.)

However, ATMs are also under increasing attack by malware. As early as 2004, 70 percent of new ATMs ran on Windows. Diebold estimates that 90 percent of its shipment today uses Windows. This leaves them as potentially vulnerable to malware as any ordinary computer.

The TSPY_SKIMER malware family, including and , serves as a good sample of the malware threats facing ATMs. Both of these were authored by someone who has good knowledge of ATM architecture, considering that these systems are not publicly documented. In addition, these malware need to be manually installed by someone who has direct access to an ATM terminal.

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