ATM skimming | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

In recent years, gas stations have become one of the favorite targets for thieves who are stealing customers' credit and debit card information by installing a Bluetooth-enabled payment card skimmers at gas stations across the nation. The media has also reported several recent crimes surrounding credit card skimmers, including: Gas pump skimmer found at a 7-Eleven in Pinellas County Credit card skimmer found at West Palm Beach gas station Credit Card Skimmer Found at Gas Station in Sunnyvale Several Gas Pump Credit Card Skimmers Found at Bay Area Stations Gas pump credit card skimmers found at Boerne stations Credit card skimmers target Anthem Circle K For those unaware, Bluetooth credit card skimmer is a tiny sneaky device designed to stealthily capture payment card information, like credit card holder's card number, expiration date and the full name, which nearby thieves then retrieve wirelessly over a Bluetooth connection. Since these devices have been des...

A Romanian man has been arrested and charged with conspiracy relating to his involvement in a prolific ATM malware campaign. Emanual Leahu, 30, was arrested in the western city of Bacău, Romania by the London Regional Fraud Team (LRFT) London police run by the City of London Police on Tuesday 20 September, extradited to the United Kingdom last week. Leahu is believed to be a member of a European ATM hacking gang that stole more than £1.5 Million ($2 Million) from cash machines across the UK in 2014 using ATM malware to bypass security controls. The gang physically broke into ATMs to directly load malware onto the machines, allowing it to withdraw "large amounts of cash." The malware was good enough to erase itself to hide its tracks, making it difficult to identify the culprit. Three out of Five Gang Members Arrested Luckily, due to the gang's carelessness, one of its members was recorded by a hidden ATM surveillance camera, which allowed the police to id...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

The son of a prominent Russian lawmaker has been found guilty in the United States of running a hacking scheme that stole and sold 2.9 million US credit card numbers using Point-of-Sale (POS) malware, costing financial institutions more than $169 Million. Roman Seleznev , 32, the son of Russian Parliament member Valery Seleznev, was arrested in 2014 while attempting to board a flight in the Maldives, which sparked an international dispute between American and Russian authorities, who characterized the extradition as a " kidnapping ." Prosecutors introduced evidence from a corrupted laptop seized by the authorities at the time of his arrest.  "I don't know of any case that has allowed such outrageous behavior," said his lawyer, John Henry Browne. Also Read: How to Freeze Credit Report To Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft . According to the Department of Justice, Seleznev, who also went by the moniker ' Track2 ' online, was convicted in...

We have heard a lot about ATM skimmers, but it's nearly impossible to spot one. Some skimmers are designed to look exactly like the card slot on the original machine and attached to the front, and others are completely hidden inside the ATM. But, during his vacation in Vienna, Austria, cyber security expert Benjamin Tedesco spotted an ATM skimmer that was totally unrecognizable. Tedesco was hanging out in Vienna and when about to draw some cash from a cash machine outside St. Stephen's Cathedral, he decided to do a quick visual inspection of the ATM machine and surprisingly spotted the dodgy device attached to it. Warning: Beware of Skimming Devices Installed on the ATM Vestibule Doors . That was a credit card skimmer – a perfect replica of the actual card reader that was designed to steal credit card information of users when they swipe their card to take off cash from the ATM. "Being security paranoid, I repeated my typical habit of checking the card read...

In an era where major data hacks are on the rise, it is no surprise breaches on individuals are also up. In just three hours, over 100 criminals managed to steal ¥1.4 Billion ( approx. US$12.7 Million ) from around 1,400 ATMs placed in small convenience stores across Japan. The heist took place on May 15, between 5:00 am and 8:00 am, and looked like a coordinated attack by an international crime network. The crooks operated around 1,400 convenience store ATMs from where the cash was withdrawn simultaneously in 16 prefectures around Japan, including Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Kanagawa, Aichi, Nagasaki, Hyogo, Chiba and Nigata, The Mainichi reports . Also Read: Tyupkin Malware Hacking ATM Machines Worldwide Many ATM incidents involve a long-established technique called ' ATM Skimming ' in which criminals install devices to obtain card details via its magnetic stripe, or use ATM malware or from data breaches, and then work with so-called carders and money mules to pilfe...

A Romanian card skimmer arrested for being part of an international cybercrime group that used malware to plunder US$217,000 from ATMs has escaped from a Bucharest prison on Sunday morning (6th March). Renato Marius Tulli , 34, was being held at Police Precinct 19 in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, after being arrested together with 7 other suspects as part of a joint Europol, Eurojust, and DIICOT investigation on January 5, 2016. Tulli was part of a criminal gang specialized in robbing NCR-based ATMs. According to the federal authorities, the gang allegedly used a piece of malware, dubbed Tyupkin , to conduct what's known as Jackpotting attack and made Millions by infecting ATMs across Europe and beyond. Using Tyupkin malware, the criminals were able to empty cash from infected ATMs by issuing commands through the ATM's pin pad. Authorities announced on Monday that Tulli escaped with Grosy Gostel , 38, a man held for robbery charges, while both o...

Romanian law enforcement authorities have arrested eight cyber criminals suspected of being part of an international criminal gang that pilfered cash from ATMs ( automatic teller machines ) using malware. The operation said to be one of the first operations of this type in Europe, was conducted in Romania and Moldova by Romanian National Police and the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crimes and Terrorism ( DIICOT ), with assistance from Europol, Eurojust and other European law enforcement authorities. Europol did not provide names of any of the eight criminals arrested but said that the gang allegedly used a piece of malware, dubbed Tyupkin , to conduct what are known as Jackpotting attacks and made millions by infecting ATMs across Europe and beyond. With the help of Tyupkin malware, the suspects were able to empty cash from infected ATMs by issuing commands through the ATM's pin pad. " The criminal group was involved in large scale ATM Jackpotting...

Despite anti-skimmer ATM Lobby access control system available in the market, we have seen a number of incidents in recent years where criminals used card skimmers at ATM doors. Few years back, cyber criminals started using card skimmers on the door of the ATM vestibule , where customers have to slide their credit or debit cards to gain access to the ATM. The typical ATM Skimming devices are used by fraudsters capture both magnetic stripe data contained on the back of a debit or credit card as well as the PIN number that is entered by the customer when using the ATM. In recent case discussed by Brian, cyber criminal installed the card skimming device on the ATM Lobby Card Access Control and a pinhole hidden camera pointed at the ATM's keyboard. Basically, it's an ATM skimmer that requires no modification to the ATM. The card skimmer hidden on the ATM door records the debit and credit card information , and the pinhole camera records the PIN number the ...

Criminals will not let any way to cheat an ATM machine out of its cash, as it's one of the easiest way for them to get the hands on cash. ATM skimmers have now discovered a new and high-tech approach to target cash machines directly by inserting a physical notorious device into it instead. According to the Chinese press , two Ukrainian men arrested in Macau for reportedly planting the malicious software program in the seven Macau bank ATMs. This could came out as the quickest method to hack the cash machines. HACKING ATM MACHINES The two accused were arrested this week by the authorities in Macau, a Chinese territory approximately west of Hong Kong, but the two are from Ukraine and had successfully stolen almost $100,000 by corrupting more than seven ATMs with a computer virus. According to the authorities, the men allegedly used a green object device ( as shown in the image ) to carry out the money fraud. They first connected the device to a laptop and then inserted...

In March this year, we reported that the major card distributor companies, VISA and Mastercard are migrating to EMV chip cards , also known as PIN-and-Chip cards. Unlike traditional magnetic stripe payment cards, EMV chip cards generates a unique code for every transaction, making it nearly* impossible for criminals to use the card for counterfeit fraud. But Nothing is perfectly secure, even not the PIN-and-Chip based payment cards. All anti-cloning theories were already proven wrong, when a group of researchers found a way to hack the Credit and Debit cards based on the latest Chip-and-Pin technology. Back in 2012, we reported about a research paper entitled " Chip and Skim: cloning EMV cards with the pre-play attack " published ( old paper ) by team of researchers from the University of Cambridge, UK, who demonstrated that Chip and PIN payment card systems are also vulnerable to Card Cloning. The same team of researchers presented their EVM related research last Mond...

Hacking ATM Machines is nothing new, but it seems that instead of relying on ATM skimmers now some smart hackers in Europe are reportedly targeting ATM Machines using Malware -loaded USB drives to steal money. Most of the world's ATMs are running on Windows XP operating system, which is highly vulnerable to Malware attacks. Just like your Desktop Laptops, some ATMs also have USB sockets, which is hidden behind the ATM's fascia. The German security researchers who discovered the hack detailed their findings at the Chaos Computing Congress in Hamburg, Germany recently. They said that the thieves cut holes in the fascia to access a USB port and then uploaded malware to the machines. The malware creates a backdoor that can be accessed on the front panel. " These researchers explained that the malware allowed the thieves to create a unique interface on the ATMs by typing in a 12-digit code. This interface allowed for withdrawal and also showed the criminals the amount of money and e...

Today I desire to propose an interview with Andrey Komarov , CEO of IntelCrawler and Dan Clements , President of IntelCrawler. IntelCrawler  is a multi-tier intelligence aggregator, which gathers information and cyber prints from a starting big data pool of over 3, 000, 000, 000 IPv4 and over 200, 000, 000 domain names, which are scanned for analytics and dissemination to drill down to a desired result. I have prepared for them a series of answers and questions to analyze significant evolutions in the cyber-threat landscape: Q. Which are the most concerning cyber threats for private businesses and government organizations? A. Avoiding talking about usual and standard things, of course, the most dangerous and annoying is the emergence of fundamentally new vulnerabilities in critical applications and systems. " Zero day " vulnerabilities market is developing every day and taking the shape of a part of the future cyber warfare market , as it is still in the process of formati...

A Romanian man serving a five-year jail sentence in Romania for his involvement in an ATM skimming scheme, has developed a device designed to protect ATMs from such attacks. 33-year-old Valentin Boanta who is being detained in a prison from Vaslui, Romania, after he was convicted on charges of bank card fraud in 2009, developed what he calls the SRS (Secure Revolving System) which changes the way ATM machines read bank cards to prevent the operation of skimming devices that criminals hide inside ATMs. " When I got caught I became happy. This liberation opened the way to working for the good side ," Boanta said. " Crime was like a drug for me. After I was caught, I was happy I escaped from this adrenaline addiction ," Boanta said. Boanta began working on SRS during his trial. SRS, Boanta says, can be installed into any ATM. ATM skimmers work by installing a second, concealed card reader over the one that's built into the ATM. When an unsuspecting bank customer...